


Guns N' Roses Takes on the Internet

by GothBunny



Category: Guns N' Roses
Genre: 18 should be old enough to drink and smoke weed, Alternate Universe, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, McDonald's, Mild Language, Modern AU, Rating May Change, Tags May Change, Underage Drinking, Underage Drug Use, steven is an adorable puppy, texting au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:02:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 26
Words: 19,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25564030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GothBunny/pseuds/GothBunny
Summary: How Steven, Duff, Slash, Izzy, and Axl met through the powers of the modern internet and the subsequent chaos that ensued.Also known as the author starting a whole new ongoing fic before finishing the first one and because of laziness, chose a storyline that can have way shorter chapters.
Relationships: Duff McKagan/Slash, Steven Adler/Izzy Stradlin
Comments: 191
Kudos: 65





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Since updating one ongoing fic is hard enough, I've decided to start a second. Because why not add something to make fic updates even less frequent. The idea is almost entirely based on an extremely similar fic known as "The Internet" by @izzysleatherpants on Wattpad. The account and the fic have since been taken down, but they now go by 70sabed here on Ao3 if you want to check them out. Other than that I hope you all enjoy this fic (and all my other fics too please) and don't get too annoyed at my horrible updating schedule.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Steven checked Instagram and found some funny posts.

The two fans and singular portable air conditioner that was probably little more than a half-century old metal box that made whirring noises were expertly placed around the small bedroom, in an attempt to maximize their cooling effect and keep the temperature of the room under ninety degrees. Sure, outside it was probably a bit cooler, his phone said it was only eighty-six outside, but Steven wanted to spend his summer vacation in bed scrolling through the internet. Sue him. Summer was the time to be lazy. 

Freshman year had been arguably stressful and summer break was his reward for almost trying on his finals. Again, sue him. Physics was boring and stupid. Never in his life was he going to need to calculate the angle needed to shoot a banana at a monkey. A banana would be way too heavy anyway, it’d probably give the monkey a concussion. 

Redirecting his attention back to his phone, and more specifically Instagram’s explore tab, Steven began scrolling through what was probably miles of posts. Mostly of small dogs and early 80’s rock memes. And KISS. Steven kinda, maybe, really liked KISS. There were a lot of posts about dogs turning into cake, which was a little concerning with all the people pointing knives at their pets but probably just another internet thing that Steven hadn’t paid attention to long enough to catch onto. Internet trends might be short-lived, but his attention span was even shorter. 

Someone had given a pomeranian a mohawk, that was pretty funny. Not a half-assed mohawk either, but actively groomed their dog to have a pretty impressive tuft of fur that stuck straight up on top of its head and went down its back and dyed that tuft of fur bright magenta. 

Low-key jealous that the dog had better hair than he did, Steven went back to scrolling. KISS, KISS, meme about Vince Neil looking like a chick, KISS, cute dog, meme about Vince Neil shoving a high heel up your ass if you think he looks like a chick, KISS, thumbnail of a random dude maybe around his age with blue hair drinking what looked to be… a milkshake?

Steven clicked on the post. The video started off with a college-age guy with brown hair talking about an easier way to prepare fish. The guy then put the fish into a blender and created what was basically a raw fish smoothie. The video then cut to the blue-haired guy TAKING A SIP OF THE RAW FISH SMOOTHIE and then immediately puking into a kitchen sink while the first guy leaned into the camera and said “that’s good bass!” 

The post had been made by the blue-haired dude and the description talked about how his older brother Matt was back from college and said he’d help him remake old SNL skits, then promptly tricked him into actually drinking raw fish. Steven guessed the video was probably better if, unlike him, you had seen the original SNL skit. 

Having found the video funny enough, he gave it a like and commented a quick “lol you actually drank the fish” before going back to scroll through Instagram. It wasn’t until way later in the day, after being forced to take his little brother Jamie to the pool, that he remembered the post. Mostly because of an Instagram notification that said the blue-haired dude had replied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you aren't familiar with late 70's SNL, there's a sketch known as the Bass-O-Matic. My lame references are probably better with context, so here's where you can watch it. https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/snl40-bassomatic/2847141


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Duff checked Instagram and learned that there are actually some people that look at the actual post and not just the username attached to it.

How was it possible for a comment under a post to get more likes than the post itself? Hypothetically, of course, Duff understood, but the joke wasn’t even that funny. Okay, it was pretty funny, but it was still mildly hurtful and he wished people would just drop it already. Of course, it was Mandy who had left the comment, he had known before even looking at the notification. “@Amandy.Brixx commented ‘Aw, Duffy, you don’t need to pretend; we all know you love the taste of bASS lmao’”. First of all, she had clearly stolen that pun. Second of all, women had butts too. Of course, the comment had around a hundred likes and twenty replies all along the same vein as “lol, gay”. Sighing, Duff quickly scrolled through and blocked all the profiles that had commented fag and told himself that new drama would come up and everyone would mostly forget what had happened. He was deleting the last reply and pretending he was fine when he noticed a second comment from a profile he didn’t recognize.

“lol, you actually drank the fish”. The dude, or maybe chick’s username was @Stevie.Hugs.Pugs, with a profile pic of someone with longish blonde hair resting their chin on top of what Duff assumed was a pug. The picture wasn’t the best quality, and his phone screen was small, it didn’t make for the most in-depth analysis of a profile pic. Still, random stranger leaving a positive comment definitely beat ex-girlfriend leaving a negative comment, so he replied with a half-hearted “lol, yeah, it was super gross,” put his phone down, and decided to go make himself lunch because it was almost one-thirty and if he waited until two his mom would kick him out of the kitchen and tell him he should have come down earlier if he wanted food.

Matt had been nice enough to leave out some mac-n-cheese for him, meaning Duff didn’t have to make his own lunch, which was a plus. Not having to put effort into something was always a bonus. Normally Duff didn’t like mac-n-cheese since it was always the tiniest bit of cheese and it didn’t flavor the noodles at all, but Matt had his “secret cheese recipe” also known as adding actual cheese instead of the powder packet of lies. Chloe, his labrador who possessed a sixth sense for whenever food was being eaten, materialized next to him, sitting down and looking up at him expectantly. 

“No this is my food.” Chloe tried to reach the bowl of mac-n-cheese by standing up on her back legs and pawing at his chest, but Duff managed to keep the bowl out of her reach, snagging bites of pasta and trying to ignore her big, brown, puppy eyes and tiny whimpers whenever he got a forkful into his mouth. Sighing, he let the dog have a bite of the mac-n-cheese. “Just don’t tell Mom that I’m not technically eating my food at the table and I’ll take you for a walk later, ‘kay Chloe?”

Talking to Chloe was almost like having friends again. Nah, he did have friends. They were just all theater kids that operated outside his sphere of social media. He was, in fact, going to meet up with some of them later in June for pride. It just sucked that all the posts he had made to Instagram for the past six months had been immediately overshadowed by gay jokes. Except, ya know, for this Stevie-Pug guy. He seemed cool. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If Duff's dog Chloe wasn't a labrador, feel free to yell at me in the comments and I'll change it. Identifying dog breeds is not at all my area of expertise.


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Slash stayed up way too late watching YouTube and really needs to go to sleep.

This was the last youtube video and then he was going to sleep. For real this time. One more video of Prince’s epic guitar solo at the R’n’R Hall of Fame and then he was gonna go to bed. He promised. Twenty videos, three hours, and a scolding from his mom to “go the fuck to sleep”, it was two-thirty-five in the morning and Slash was watching his twenty-first ‘last video’ while checking Instagram. The ZSL zoo got a new snake, which was pretty cool. Snakes were always pretty cool though. Aerosmith was still in Las Vegas. Less cool. Slash wished they’d play some shows in Europe. At least then he’d have a chance to see them live. Huh, he had an unread DM. That was weird. Who would be DMing him? His nonexistent friends, which, even if they did exist, he’d be too shy and awkward to ever talk to? Yeah, no. Maybe someone from school had come across his five meager posts of his guitar playing and was going to try and get him to join their band again. Like he wanted to go through that level of awkwardness again. It was always the same. They would want him to play songs he didn’t like, none of them were ever particularly dedicated to actually becoming a real band, and he would clam up and hide behind his hair and just play whatever they told him to play until after a few months his boredom overrode his embarrassment and feelings of obligation and he would see himself out. 

“@A_Rose wants to send you a message.” The profile pic was a scull with what Slash assumed was a rose blooming inside it. He hit accept. If it turned out to be some crazy bot he could always block this “Rose” guy later. Slash glanced over the message, “r u on spotify” before checking out their profile. The guy- Slash wasn’t sure it wasn’t a girl but he was going to assume- had tons of posts, mostly selfies with pictures of albums like Led Zeppelin and Queen- good choices- and sometimes just completely random crap sprinkled in. Slash wondered how someone could be confident enough to have both two thousand followers and post mostly pictures of their face. They weren’t all flattering photos either, there was one where he had let who Slash guessed was his little sister braid his hair and it was, uh, not the best hairstyle Slash had ever seen. Slash himself didn’t even possess the confidence to let most people in real life see his face, let alone people online, and this level of self-esteem was new to him. 

“don’t just leave me on read dipshit”. Crap, he wasn’t going to get away with not responding. Slash’s finger hovered over the ‘block’ button, not wanting to deal with potentially humiliating human interaction, but he stopped himself. If he couldn’t handle a simple yes or no question over Instagram DMs, then there was no way he was going to make it through year eleven, where there would be things like group projects and class presentations. Somehow, simultaneously both shaking with nervousness and mentally scolding himself for being nervous in the first place, he typed out a quick “no spotify, sorry”, set his phone down on his nightstand, plugged it in, then rolled over and went to sleep. For real for real this time.

In the morning there was a new message. “Do you take song requests?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at that, two updates in two days :)


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Axl maintained his grudge against Izzy for moving to LA without him.

Axl tried to contain his frustration at @Asshole_Who_Doesn’t_Respond_To_DMs. The person’s real username was @SlashHudson, but Axl had never really cared to remember people’s names. Pissed off, he pulled up his text thread with @Asshole_Who_Randomly_Moves_To_California, also known as his best friend Izzy.

“This asshole on Instagram keeps leaving me on read”

After five minutes, Izzy texted back. “you called him a dipshit again didn’t you.”

“maybe” 

“who is he?”

“@SlashHudson plays some good covers of aerosmith”

“cool.” Izzy went silent then for twenty minutes, and if he hadn’t been Izzy and Axl hadn’t been friends with him since the tail-end of elementary school, Axl would have been pissed. However, when he texted back in the middle of a level of Angry Birds 2, that was unacceptable. 

“he’s a good guitar player.”

“i want u to know that u interrupted my game of angry birds n i will never forgive you”

“okay.” 

“u could at least pretend like u care a little”

“no.” 

“fuck u” Izzy went silent again. Of course he did. Axl tried to go back to furiously playing Angry Birds, but it wasn’t violent enough, which frustrated him. Fuck Izzy for just up and driving across the country right after graduation. Sure, he could follow him, and yes, Izzy had offered up a couch to crash on while he got himself settled in California, but he hardly had enough money to get himself TO Los Angeles. Axl went back to the text thread and scrolled back up to their conversation the day before.

“fuck u”

“okay.” 

“come back home”

“no.” 

“please” 

“axl if it bothers you this much you can move in with me”

“ur living in a 400sqft studio apartment, fuck no”

“theres a pool”

“u know what i could get here for the rent ur paying? an actual fucking house”

“and be surrounded by old people in asscrack, nowhere.”

“not true”

“name one interesting person in lafayette.”

“ME ASSHOLE! I LIVE IN LAFAYETTE!”

The ‘new message’ icon popped up at the bottom of Axl’s phone screen, stopping him from continuing to read over their previous argument and get progressively angrier. Izzy had sent him an Instagram post. The video was some guy with blue hair getting tricked into drinking a smoothie-ified fish in reference to an old SNL sketch, which was pretty funny.

“an example of the interesting people who live on the west coast.”

“their location says seattle washington n snl is shot in new york”

“no one in indiana is tricking their little brother into drinking a pureed fish.”

“fuck u” He could totally get Stuart to drink a pureed fish. He wouldn’t, because he was a good brother that wasn’t going to trick his younger siblings into doing stupid shit, but he could. If he wanted to.


	5. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Izzy’s calm evening plans got hijacked by a growing epidemic of stupid people.

“this asshole keeps leaving me on read”

Goddamnit. Izzy had been hoping to spend the evening smoking weed and laughing at old episodes of South Park, not dealing with whatever new thing was pissing Axl off. He hoped this wasn’t an excuse to start the ‘move to LA’ argument again. “you called him a dipshit again didn’t you.”

“maybe” 

So yes then. Izzy wondered who the poor guy was that Axl was probably borderline harassing. “who is he?”

“@SlashHudson” then, a minute later, “plays some good covers of aerosmith”

@SlashHudson did turn out to play some good covers of aerosmith. Izzy listened to about six of his posts, impressed. “he’s a good guitar player.”

“i want u to know that u interrupted my game of angry birds n i will never forgive you”

Izzy didn’t really give a fuck about Axl’s game of angry birds. “okay.” 

“u could at least pretend like u care a little”

“no.” 

“fuck u” 

Deciding to ignore Axl for the rest of the evening, Izzy picked up the joint he had been about to smoke when Axl first texted, lit it, and settled back to scroll through Instagram since it was already open on his phone. That was another great thing about California, legal weed. Not for him of course, because of dumb legal drinking and smoking ages, but a fake ID was far more convenient than finding a dealer.

Eventually, Izzy stumbled across a video of two guys reenacting SNL’s Bass-O-Matic sketch, which was hilarious. Marijuana was doing maybe fifty percent of the work to make the video funny, but Izzy was laughing hard enough to forget his plan on ignoring Axl and sent him the video as “an example of the interesting people who live on the west coast.”

“their location says seattle washington n snl is shot in new york”

“no one in indiana is tricking their little brother into drinking a pureed fish.”

“fuck u” Fuck you too Axl. Izzy decided to go back and rewatch the video, laughing even harder at the expression of the one guy as he drank pureed fish. Comedy gold right there. He scrolled down to read the comments, wanting to see if anyone else found this as funny as he had. 

“Aw, Duffy, you don’t need to pretend; we all know you love the taste of bASS lmao” It took longer than Izzy would like to admit for him to get the pun, but when he figured it out he was confused. He’d heard his fair share of homophobic remarks- another reason to move to California- but as far as this comment went it was just… super dumb. Everyone had a butt. Unless they had suffered some freak accident, maybe.

Had Izzy been sober, he probably would’ve just let it go, but since he wasn’t sober, and thought he was funny, he decided to reply. “^^someone’s clearly still upset that someone dumped her bASS. lmao.”

Fuck people though. Izzy got up to grab himself a couple bags of Doritos before turning on the TV and rewatching old episodes of South Park.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I could definitely trick one of my sisters into drinking a pureed fish, I'd just have to find a fish first.


	6. Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Steven made a friend.

“@duff_mckagan replied to your comment ‘lol, yeah, it was super gross’”. Steven was so surprised that someone had actually replied to his comment that he dropped the leash he’d been holding, giving Shadow five seconds to make a dash towards the street before she managed to grab hold of the runaway pug and extract her from the middle of the road before she got hit by an oncoming pickup truck. Fortunately in Cleveland, the sun didn’t set until really late, so even though it was way past eight, there was still a decent amount of light left. If only Shadow didn’t wait to pee until after sunset. 

Steven was getting off track. Making sure he had a firm grip on Shadow, he pulled out his phone and opened Instagram. The video was just as funny as it had been the first time he’d seen it. He wondered if this @Duff_Mckagan guy would mind if he private messaged him. People at school were always telling him to mind his own business, but maybe people online were nicer and this guy wouldn’t mind talking to him. 

He took a brief moment to weigh the pros and cons, something he rarely did. If he got lucky, he’d have a friend. If he got unlucky, the person would tell him to go away. Steven decided to send him a quick private message. “hey you seem cool; wanna be friends?”

Shadow started to squirm in his arms and Steven remembered why he’d come outside in the first place. Setting down the pug, he waited for her to pee, and then the two went back inside, upstairs to his room. Leaving all the windows open in his room had worked, and it now was, in fact, significantly cooler than it had been during the afternoon. 

While he closed all the windows to keep the cool air inside, Shadow jumped up on the bed, twisting all the covers that had been kicked down to the foot of the bed into a little pug nest, curling up and falling asleep. Steven flopped down on the bed too, and pulled out his phone to see if he’d gotten a reply. Sure, it had only been maybe five minutes, tops, but he was impatient.

“hey you seem cool; wanna be friends?”

“yeah ok, we can be friends”

Steven was elated. Sure, he’d always had friends, at least, he thought of them as his friends, but no one had ever outright said they’d be friends with him and that felt really good. “do you have any pets?”

“yeah, my yellow lab chloe” Duff also sent a selfie with said dog, who looked rather disgruntled with the fact that she was being used as a pillow.

“woah shes adorable; heres my dog shadow; she’s not big enough to be used as a pillow tho” Then, when Duff didn’t reply immediately, “you have cool hair btw”

“thanks, your pug is way cuter than mine lol”

Duff ended up talking to him for another two hours, about everything from instruments- Duff played bass, guitar, and drums but mostly bass- to music- Duff liked The Clash and The Stooges- and just random stuff in general. At around eleven-thirty, his mom yelled at him to go to bed and Steven had to put his phone away, but all and all it was a good day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the Guns N Roses concert I was going to go to got cancelled :( it would have been this Sunday, and then they postponed it, and then when they rescheduled all the shows they had to cancel a few and one of those was mine :(


	7. Chapter Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Duff made a friend and learned that not everyone agreed with his ex.

“yeah ok, we can be friends” Of the private messages Duff had expected to get, a random guy named Stevie asking to be his friend after watching his dumb video of getting pranked with a fish smoothie wasn’t one of them. But after a quick check of his profile, lots of pictures of him and a dog along with pictures of him sitting behind a drumset, Duff figured the guy was probably harmless and might even have a similar taste in music, which would be nice. His few friends left from school were all really into broadway musicals and Duff really couldn’t stand those. The guy- Stevie- replied almost instantly.

“do you have any pets?”

“yeah, my yellow lab chloe” Duff took a quick photo of himself and Chloe, who seemed rather unhappy with him. If she didn’t want to be used as a pillow she should stop being so comfortable.

“woah shes adorable; heres my dog shadow; she’s not big enough to be used as a pillow tho” Steven replied with a photo of his own dog, a pug who was currently napping in a nest of blankets. 

“thanks, your pug is way cuter than mine lol”

“my mom would hate it if i dyed my hair; shes already unhappy that i let it grow out”

“sorry about that, my mom’s super chill” it was true, his mom had been super chill about everything that had happened in the past half-year, which Duff was insanely grateful for. Having unaccepting classmates and an unaccepting family would have been absolute hell. “it’s been a while since i dyed it though, the brown roots are really starting to become visible and it’s starting to piss me off”

“you should redye it pink lmao” Hahaha, no. “do you play any instruments?”

“yeah, guitar, drums, and bass; mostly bass; i was in a band for a little while, but it fell apart”

“that sucks; i play the drums; do you like KISS?”

“they’re okay, i mostly listen to punk; like the clash and the stooges and stuff”

“oh cool; is your name really duff?”

“lol no, its michael, but there are two michaels on my street so everyone calls me duff”

“my names steven; everyone calls me steven”

Steven talked to him for another hour and a half before saying he had to go to bed. Duff exited the chat and decided to check and see if anyone had commented fag on his post again now, while he was in a good mood and would therefore be less phased. There were a few more “lol gay” comments, which he had expected, and a comment from someone called @isbell.stradlin. “^^someone’s clearly still upset that someone dumped her bASS. Lmao.”

That hadn’t been exactly how things with Mandy had gone down, but Duff was grateful that someone was willing to stick up for him. Not wanting to reply and give anyone any more reasons to make fun of him, Duff sent this @isbell.stradlin a private message. “hey, thanks for what you replied on my post”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Duff would look really good with pink hair though. Just saying.


	8. Chapter Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Slash spent a day at the zoo and almost died from embarrassment.

There were many ways Slash enjoyed waking up. His brother running into his room and jumping on his face at seven in the morning after only four hours of sleep was not one of them. After a few moments of struggling, he managed to kick Ash off his bed- who told him there were crêpes downstairs before running back out of his bedroom. Fucking siblings. He stumbled out of bed, pulling on a pair of jeans and scooping up the least smelling shirt he could find on the floor, he stumbled down the stairs to grab himself some breakfast. 

After a breakfast of crêpes topped with sliced bananas, chocolate sauce, and whipped cream- which was the best way to have crêpes in Slash’s humble opinion- he checked his phone to find that the @A_Rose guy from the previous night had left another message asking if he took requests. He’d never had someone make a request before, but he probably could start. It would depend on the song, no way was he playing some sort of four chords acoustic guitar by the beach crap, but Slash somehow doubted @A_Rose would’ve stumbled across his profile if that’s what he’d been looking for. There was also the possibility that @A_Rose wouldn’t like his interpretation and get offended if he thought that Slash had tarnished the song’s image and reputation. On the other hand, @A_Rose might judge him way more if he didn’t reply or said no. Maybe he should just ask what the song was and forestall having to make a decision while also not taking forever to reply.

While Slash waited for @A_Rose to respond, he decided to fool around on his guitar. He didn’t like to call it practicing, because that always sounded like way less fun or something he had to do instead of something he wanted to do. As usual, he completely lost track of time until around one-fifteen when his mom came into his room, told him he couldn’t spend the rest of the day alone inside, handed him a paper bag filled with a sandwich, an apple, a mini bottle of water, and twenty quid, and effectively kicked him out of the house for the rest of the afternoon. Figuring now was as good a time as any to go check out ZSL’s new snake, Slash biked the half-hour trip there, thanked himself for having the foresight to get a membership card so he could get into the zoo without talking to anybody, and spent the afternoon wandering around the reptile house. 

At around six-thirty he got a call from his mom saying dinner was at seven and if he wasn’t home by seven he was responsible for his own food. Since Slash still had the twenty pounds and wasn’t in a huge rush to leave the zoo and go home, he decided to miss dinner and instead get a burger or pizza or something at one of the zoo cafes. This plan would have been foolproof if Slash hadn’t forgotten one key detail. He’d have to talk to the cashier in order to purchase said food, and just because the universe loved to fuck with him, the cashier had to be an insanely tall guy with piercings and a cut-up Sex Pistols t-shirt under the apron uniform, who’s carelessly bored handsomeness managed to make Slash’s ineptitude to be anything other than the epitome of social awkwardness sky-rocket. 

When he had finally managed to order a simple slice of cheese pizza and a can of soda despite having turned into a mumbling, blushing mess, he hurriedly sat down with his food in the most tucked-away corner and pulled out his phone in an attempt to somewhat hide. @A_Rose had apparently finally gotten back to him with his song request. “love theme from the godfather movie”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The proper way to eat crêpes is with Nutella and strawberries, and if there's no whipped cream I don't know if you can even consider it a crêpe. Also, I have no idea how England works, so if I completely fuck something up culture-wise or anything along those lines please tell me in the comments and I will go back and fix it.


	9. Chapter Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Axl got inspired by his boring ass job and came up with the genius idea for a group chat.

Summer jobs fucking sucked. Well, all jobs suck. But working at a McDonald’s drive-thru which almost solely relied on college students in the middle of summer when the University wasn’t in session- yeah, there was summer session but that wasn’t really in session- majorly sucked ass. Sure, the rest of the restaurant had air-conditioning, but the tiny booth for the poor schmuck who took drive-thru orders? Nope, no air-conditioning for them. Axl did not appreciate being the poor schmuck without air-conditioning in muggy, eighty-degree weather. Especially when practically no one came through the drive-thru except the occasional college-nerd who stopped by for an iced coffee. No, he was not jealous that they had the financial means to go to college while he was stuck working at McDonald’s because his step-father spent all the money that should be going to feeding his younger siblings on booze while he tried to look after Amy and Stuart. No, he was perfectly happy to be stuck working in customer service. 

Sneaking a peek at Instagram to see Izzy’s latest post of himself in sunglasses and little else smoking a cigarette while relaxing on top of a giant inflatable duck in a pool did not help to improve Axl’s shitty mood. It wasn’t that Izzy’s offer to share his LA apartment was even that far off from what Axl wanted out of his future. All through middle school and even through high school they had both talked of moving to California, Izzy’s goal to make music and Axl’s goal to not be surrounded by the mindfuck that was his family and hopefully get a higher education. In fact, Izzy’s suggestion that he move in with him, go to the nearby community college to get his AA, and then continue on to get his bachelor’s at one of the many universities or private colleges was a genuinely good suggestion. Except for the fact that his mother was a spineless idiot and his step-father was genuinely completely insane and there was no way in hell he was leaving his siblings in the care of those two. 

Axl snuck another peek at Instagram. @Asshole_Who_Doesn’t_Respond_To_DMs_In_A_Timely_Manner hadn’t replied to his Love Theme request yet. Neither saying he would nor saying he wouldn’t. Just complete silence, which frustrated Axl like nothing else. Twenty more minutes until his shift ended. Fuck McDonald’s. Out of boredom he tried to message Izzy, but that fucker didn’t reply either. He should start a group chat. That way he’d have a greater chance of someone replying to him when McDonald’s bored him out of his mind.

Of course, as soon as he got off work Izzy found the time to reply. “what do you want.”

Axl decided to take the time to tell Izzy his genius idea. “we should start a group chat”

“with who?” And then, “you need people to form a group chat.”

“idk; maybe that fish drinking guy or the guitar player or something”

“you cant just add random people into a group chat axl.”

“sure u can”

Izzy went silent for twenty minutes and even though Axl was driving and therefore shouldn’t be messaging with people on his phone it still pissed him off. “okay but im making the group chat and no going around calling people dipshits.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Random question; if someone eats peanuts, and then someone who's allergic to peanuts goes down on them, can the person who's allergic go into anaphylactic shock? Basically, how much does the food you eat affect the taste of your cum? Google won't answer my questions.


	10. Chapter Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Izzy became roped into a group chat he did not want to be a part of because having empathy for others sucks ass.

Los Angeles had the best fucking weather. No crazy summer hail storms where there was somehow both the muggiest, hottest air possible and also freezing cold rain; weather that somehow didn’t cancel itself out and instead made everything ten times worse. No, LA maintained a forecast of dry heat and sun year-round. Plus, Izzy’s shift at the restaurant-slash-bar place on Sunset Boulevard, while it started at six-thirty, got off at two, which meant he had an entire afternoon to spend doing whatever the fuck he wanted. Which was usually napping in the pool that was attached to the apartment complex he was living in. Was sleeping while lying on a giant, inflatable, duck-shaped pool-float that was in a pool a potential drowning hazard? Yes. Was he an adult capable of making his own fucking decisions? Also yes.

Izzy was rudely pulled from his nap by his phone aggressively ping-ing to let him know that he had a notification. Of course he did. And of course, it was Axl sending him around fifty messages on Instagram in the span of two seconds. Not wanting to deal with whatever was bothering Axl, Izzy decided to check the rest of his DMs. 

Matt had messaged him asking if he knew when band practice was. Izzy replied with the obvious “no idea.” since none of them were even halfway decent at making a plan that everyone could agree on and then following through. @duff_mckagan wanted to send him a message. It took him longer than he would like to admit to remember who @duff_mckagan was. Weed was not known for aiding a person’s ability to remember things. 

“hey, thanks for what you replied on my post” Ah, shit. Being some kid’s Instagram hero was not a pastime Izzy wanted to indulge in. 

“dont worry about it.” Hopefully, this @duff_mckagan could recognize his indifference and leave him the fuck alone. He honestly preferred talking to Axl as opposed to talking to new people. Axl at least somewhat understood his desire to be unobligated to talk to people for extended periods of time. There was always the risk that new people would want to be his friend and expect him to message them on a regular basis. Speaking of which, he should reply to Axl.

“what do you want.”

“we should start a group chat” Goddamnit.

“with who?” Axl was silent. “you need people to form a group chat.”

“idk; maybe that fish drinking guy or the guitar player or something” Now there was an idea. He could pin this @duff_mckagan on someone else and then gracefully exit the group chat without feeling bad about not wanting to interact with people. However, most people didn’t like to be added to group chats at random. Izzy pointed this out to Axl.

“sure u can” At that exact moment, @duff_mckagan decided to message back.

“my ex threw a hissy fit when i came out as bi and now everyone at schools favorite past time is to comment fag on my posts; so having someone comment something other than that is appreciated” If only Izzy could turn off his feelings, life would be so much fucking easier. Because while he couldn’t relate to having an ex-girlfriend or being bisexual, he could definitely relate to an entire school deciding that calling him a faggot was the funniest thing since vine compilations. Sure, most of the comments didn’t really affect him, since he had been perfecting the art of not-giving-a-fuck since kindergarten, but sometimes people got creative and that always sucked major balls. Yet another reason to move to LA. 

Izzy still didn’t want to become some guy’s personal therapist or comment vigilante or something equally dumb, but maybe a group chat would be a good idea. He could simultaneously not worry about @duff_mckagan having no friends- because people are assholes- and not have to be the person to solve that problem. 

“my idiot friend is starting a group chat, do you want to be added.”

“yeah, ok”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yesterday the high was ninety-six degrees, which is way too hot for a place which is known for its rainy weather. Normal temperature and rain is way better than weather that is way too hot with no rain, and then a random thunderstorm in the evening. Side note, anyone else ever get a text from a friend and think "fuck, I have to listen to this person's problems" but then remember they texted a group chat and get happy their not your problem? Or am I the only one who thinks like Izzy?


	11. Chapter Eleven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Steven took his brother frog-hunting and was relatively unsuccessful.

When Steven woke up the next morning, the first thing he did was send his new friend a “good morning” message. Duff didn’t respond immediately, but that was okay. Shadow was already awake, jumping and pawing at his bedroom door and begging to be let out. Heaving a sigh, Steven dragged himself out of bed, pulled on the closest article of clothing, which was a pair of gray-green cargo shorts that were just slightly too long, and stumbled downstairs to grab Shadow’s leash from the mud-room. 

While Shadow was busy pooping in the neighbors’ front lawn, Steven checked his phone. Still no reply from Duff. Even after he had cleaned up Shadow’s mess, chased after Shadow as she dashed after a squirrel, and gotten home there was still no response. Steven tried not to worry about that as he ate his breakfast of orange juice and cheerios. 

By ten-thirty, there was still no response from Duff and Steven was close to freaking out. What if Duff had decided he didn’t actually want to be his friend? What if Duff had found him annoying? Steven read over their previous texts, but couldn’t figure out where he had messed up. Then he remembered that where Duff lived it was only seven-thirty in the morning and he was probably still asleep. That made him feel better. 

After lunch, Jamie begged him to help him catch frogs. Steven wanted to say no and point out that the best way to catch frogs was at night when you could sneak up on them with a flashlight, but his mom gave him a look and he kept quiet. He knew what the look meant. His mom had been getting more and more annoyed with him since high school had started and he wasn’t quite sure why. Anyway, she was definitely too strict to let him take Jamie out after dark, so catching frogs was how he was going to have to spend the afternoon.

Steven and Jamie spent four hours looking for frogs in the many drainage ditches that lined the roads of their neighborhood. No luck. Steven suggested they catch some cicadas, of which there were plenty humming loudly in the trees. Jamie said no, he wanted frogs, and looked disappointed. 

Hating to see his brother sad, Steven helped him look for another hour, with slightly better luck. No, they didn’t catch any frogs, but they had at least seen one for a split second before it hopped into the water. Really, they’d have much better luck at night when it was cooler than in the afternoon during the hottest point of the day.

Duff had replied with a “good morning” while Steven had been out frog-hunting, which made him feel a little better about disappointing Jamie. At dinner when his mom asked Jamie how catching frogs had gone, Steven tried to point out to her that they would be much more successful catching frogs after the sun went down and it got cooler. She responded that she had “told him several times they were not allowed out of the house past nine-thirty and running around the neighborhood after dark was irresponsible and dangerous.”

Feeling dejected, Steven took Shadow out for her evening walk. By the time he got home and had flopped onto his bed, he had another text from Duff. “hey, do you want to join a group chat?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My mom was complaining to me yesterday that she found three hypodermic needles with amber liquid inside them lying in the middle of the road. She was all "maybe it was insulin" and I was like, "yes of course Mom. Because diabetics can't wait to get their next fix of insulin so they shoot up in the middle of the street." A simple google search will tell you that insulin isn't even amber-colored. Insulin, for the most part, is a clear liquid. Also, don't bring up something that is so clearly heroin and then get pissed when someone points out that it's heroin. Anyway, that's my rant for this update. Hope you're all having a wonderful day.


	12. Chapter Twelve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Duff joined a group chat and revealed that he owns the most epic pair of pajama pants known to man.

Ah, summer. The one part of the year where every day felt like a weekend and Duff didn’t have to get out of bed until almost noon because his brother who liked to get up at the ungodly hour of eight-thirty to go jogging every morning was back from college and generously took Chloe with him. Mornings were so much better when they didn’t start with cleaning up dog shit. He loved the labrador to death, but Duff wished he could train her to use a toilet. 

Duff rolled over, intending to pull the comforter over his head and go back to sleep, but miscalculated and ended up falling on the floor, taking the comforter and sheets with him. Fine, he’d get up. A quick glance at the clock told him it was almost a quarter after ten, meaning his brother probably wasn’t back yet and therefore he would be treated to a meal without Chloe under the table begging for food. Duff threw on a black t-shirt he’d scooped up from his bedroom floor that went amazingly well with his pajama pants. Said pajama pants were covered in pictures of rainbow platypuses and had been a joke-gift from one of his sisters. His brother had left both the box of Puffins and the box of Shredded Wheat out, but only left maybe three bites of cereal left in each box. Rude. At least he had put the milk away.

Dumping the remaining crumbs that were left of the cereal into a bowl, or making cereal á salmagundi as Duff preferred to call it. He was grabbing the milk out of the fridge when Matt arrived at the back door, opening the sliding glass and allowing Chloe and her somehow muddy feet to wander into the kitchen. 

“You didn’t put the cereal away.”

“I left it out for you.” Matt grabbed Chloe’s collar before she made it to the carpet.

“Yeah, like a couple sad handfuls.”

“You’re a sad handful. Also, your shirt’s on backwards.”

Duff checked his phone while Matt tried to wash their squirming dog’s paws off in the kitchen sink. First there was a text from Kim saying that she and Andy would be there to pick him up for Pride sometime between eight and eight-fifteen the coming Sunday and if he needed any rainbow gear to let her know BEFORE Sunday. Right, he still needed to figure out what he was going to do for the Pride parade. All his clothing was either band t-shirts or a color on a scale from black to denim. 

“Hey Matt, any ideas for what I should wear to the Pride parade?”

“Sure, get one of those cheap Halloween costumes from Amazon that’s like, a giant dick, and I’ll help you tie-dye it. Massive rainbow cock costume.”

Matt’s suggestion was relatively unhelpful. Duff went back to checking his phone. Steven had messaged him a “good morning”. He sent a “good morning” back, wondering if he should get Steven added onto the group chat that @isbell.stradlin guy said he was going to make but hadn’t yet. 

It wasn’t until three in the afternoon that @isbell.stradlin actually made the group chat. If three people counted as a group chat. “alright axl heres your group chat. knock yourself out.”

@A_Rose, the guy Duff assumed was Axl, also referred to by @isbell.stradlin as “idiot friend” was quick to reply. “ok everyone; name age location/state n a pic of the pants ur wearing”

Weird request, but whatever. Duff sent a picture of his rainbow-platypus pajama pants along with the caption “duff, 16, seattle wa”. 

“i was joking about the introductions and pic and stuff but sweet jesus where did you get those pants”

@isbell.Stradlin had sent his own introduction message- “izzy, 18, LA.” and a picture of dark gray sweatpants- then followed up with “where the fuck do they sell shit like that?”

“one of my sisters works for a print shop, she got the fabric custom printed and then one of my other sisters made the pants”

They talked about random stuff, Duff found out that Axl was also eighteen, had gone to high-school with Izzy in Indiana before Izzy moved to the west coast, and had a preference for shorts that were slightly too short to be at all decent. They all had a pretty similar taste in music, which was cool. Then Duff remembered that Izzy was gay- yes he had done some Instagram stalking, as any rational person should when agreeing to be in someone’s group chat- and asked for tips on what he should wear to Pride.

“i had just gotten to LA a couple days before the parade and it was 100something degrees out so i just went in a pair of boxers.”

“just go to party city or whatever and get urself whatever rainbow shit theyve got; also izzy wtf”

“it was a whole lot more than what some other people were wearing.”

Duff didn’t think going to Pride in a pair of his underwear would go over too well. Axl’s suggestion wasn’t bad though. The conversation turned towards Axl ranting about appropriate attire in public- it wasn’t boxers- before stuttering out. 

“we rly need more ppl in this group chat”

“who would we add.”

“theres that @SlashHudson guy”

“you cant just add random people to group chats Axl.”

“i know a guy thatd probably be down to join the group chat” True, Duff didn’t actually know if Steven would be down, but he seemed at the very least extroverted and at most appeared kinda desperate to be his friend, so he probably wouldn’t be opposed. He pulled up their conversation.

“hey, do you want to join a group chat?”

Duff learned that yes, Steven did want to join the group chat; that he was fifteen, lived in Cleveland, Ohio, and had a pair of blue-gray plaid pajama pants.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Platypuses are the coolest animal in the world. And yes, platypuses is the scientifically correct term. It's not platypi. Even if you were going off of Latin roots, it would be platypodes. Fun fact of the day, platypuses don't have nipples. They just sorta sweat their milk all down their hairy-ass chests. The more you know.


	13. Chapter Thirteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Slash spent an entire day figuring out how to play a surprisingly difficult song.

@A_Rose’s request for a guitar cover of “love theme from the godfather movie” turned out to be a way bigger pain in the ass than Slash had expected. Normally when he wanted to learn a song he could just look it up on YouTube, listen to it a couple of times, play it, listen again, correct his playing, and go back and forth like that until he had the song down. This process normally took around twenty minutes from not knowing the song at all to having it pretty well memorized. Not well enough to get up and play it in front of a live audience or anything, but if someone asked him later to play the song, he’d be able to play it from memory with little to no mistakes. Most of guitar playing was all muscle memory and hearing the song in your head as you played it. 

The problem with this Godfather Theme song was that it wasn’t really a song. It was an orchestral score from a movie and a fairly complicated one at that. This Nino Rota guy was a good composer. At least, in Slash’s opinion. He didn’t spend a lot of time listening to movie scores and had never seen the Godfather, so he might be wrong. Normally if a song was giving him trouble, he could look up isolated guitar tracks and the notes would clear up. That wasn’t possible with this one, seeing as there wasn’t actually a guitar part. Slash checked the sheet music, but due to a combination of being self-taught and a helpful thing known as guitar tab, his ability to read the sheet music was essentially non-existent. 

Maybe some other guitarist had played a cover of the song. Slash looked it up. They had not. There were a lot of piano covers though. Not great, but one piano was easier to listen to and extrapolate a melody from then a whole orchestra. Slash also decided to switch to acoustic; he’d never played any classical stuff but he was fairly certain it wouldn’t be played on a Gibson Les Paul. Following along with the pianist worked a whole lot better than trying to pull one melody from the orchestral score, much to Slash’s relief. Spending half a morning working on a song only to have it not work out would have frustrated him immensely. There was just one issue. Love Theme from the Godfather sounded really boring on acoustic guitar. 

Slash was almost ready to give up, but he’d spent an entire morning working on the stupid song and he had reached a point in frustration where it would be impossible to sleep until he figured out a solution. After making and eating lunch in under seven minutes- burning the inside of his mouth due to not waiting for the scrambled eggs to cool down was totally worth it- he was back in his room messing around with his recording set-up, switching between electric and acoustic and fiddling with tone and volume and different pedals trying to get his guitar to sound like the wind and string instruments in the original recording. He got pretty close, but it still sounded boring and monochromatic. 

Alright, new plan. Slash hoped @A_Rose wouldn’t mind if he took some major artistic liberties and completely changed the timbre of the song from classical to rock guitar solo. And also improvised around half of the melody. Sure, his recording was still recognizable as the original song, but if @A_Rose was doing a dramatic reenactment of whatever scene the song was a part of, his cover of it probably wouldn’t fit. Well, here went nothing. @A_Rose would probably hate it, but the desire to get something out of nine hours of work was stronger than the normally overwhelming fear of embarrassing himself that often accompanied social interaction so he sent the audio clip and resolved to never take song requests again. Too much stress and effort. 

@A_Rose didn’t see or react to the message containing the audio file until almost midnight, which meant Slash had five hours to silently freak out. He was watching vine compilations in the hopes to calm himself down via humor when @A_Rose finally messaged back.

“not at all what i was expecting u to play but this is rly good” Slash let out a sigh of relief that released at least a day’s worth of stress. “Btw im adding u to a group chat”

All the panic that had just been released at the idea that @A_Rose didn’t hate his guitar cover was instantly replaced tenfold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I accidentally put way too much essential oil in my hippie essential oil diffuser lamp and now my room smells way too strongly of oranges and lavender. Apparently just because you can't see drops coming out of the bottle doesn't mean you should shake the bottle over the water-chamber thingy. Oops.


	14. Fourteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Axl began the cultivation of the coolest group chat in the known universe.

Of course, Izzy took his sweet time to set up the group chat. A full twenty-four hours of sweet time in fact. Sure, six and a half of those hours were spent working- Izzy would never admit it but the rent in Los Angeles was way too fucking high- and unlike Axl, who had spent many nights of his highschool years awake until five in the morning cramming for a test or writing an essay five hours before it was due, Izzy seemed to actually value his sleep. Not that he would plan ahead or anything fucking stupid like that, but if given the choice between passing a class or getting a solid seven hours of sleep, Izzy would pick sleep every time. No, he wasn’t jealous that Izzy had the ability to simply not care about people, school, or really anything in general. And no, he was also not jealous of the fact that Izzy’s parents had divorced and Izzy’s mom was often too busy to care about Izzy not caring. Yes, his life would be better if Sharon had decided to remain a single mother but that wasn’t the point. The point was that Izzy had taken his own sweet time to set up the group chat, and when he finally did set it up, there were only three people in it. Including himself and Izzy.

Axl held back on pointing out that three people wasn’t enough for a group chat. Similar to an orgy, you needed at least five participants for it to really count. This @duff_mkagan guy would probably want to add people as soon as the conversation picked up and he realized that Axl and Izzy had known each other for what was probably close to seven years at this point. And he could always add the Slash guy. Screw that “you cant just add random people into a group chat axl” bullshit. Also, he was renaming the group chat. Izzy didn’t understand that in order for it to really be a group chat, you couldn’t just leave it with the list of people that Instagram put as the name of the chat. Axl changed the name to “Bible Discussion/ Study Meeting”. If Izzy didn’t get that joke they were no longer friends.

“alright axl heres your group chat. knock yourself out.” Fuck you too Izzy.

“ok everyone; name age location/state n a pic of the pants ur wearing”

Axl had been kidding about the pants thing, but his respect for “Duff” skyrocketed when he replied with a picture of flannel pajama pants with rainbow platypuses all over them. “i was joking about the introductions and pic and stuff but sweet jesus where did you get those pants”

“where the fuck do they sell shit like that?” Izzy’s pants were lame and boring, but that was to be expected.

“one of my sisters works for a print shop, she got the fabric custom printed and then one of my other sisters made the pants” Damnit, he’d been hoping he’d be able to get himself a pair. “im going to a pride parade on sunday, either of you have advice for what to wear?”

Axl was too busy typing out his own suggestion to read Izzy’s un-advice. “i had just gotten to LA a couple days before the parade and it was 100something degrees out so i just went in a pair of boxers.”

After hitting send, he read Izzy’s suggestion and almost smashed his phone into the wall. Great advice Izzy, tell a sixteen-year-old to wear boxers to a public event. Much better advise than just buy as much rainbow shit as you can find and slather yourself with it. “also izzy wtf”

“it was a whole lot more than what some other people were wearing.”

Since when was that a valid argument. No one seemed to care about his valid argument that you should at least keep your dick covered when out in public though, and the conversation fizzled out. “we rly need more ppl in this group chat”

“who would we add.” Who goes out of their way to end sentences with punctuation and yet still fucks it up? Izzy, that was who.

“theres that @SlashHudson guy”

“you cant just add random people to group chats Axl.” Axl stopped listening. @Asshole_Who_Doesn’t_Respond_To_DMs_In_A_Timely_Manner had actually responded. With an audio file of what he assumed was the guitar cover of the Love Theme. That had been fast. Sure, a “yeah, I can cover it” or a “no, sorry” or even a “no, fuck off” when he had first requested the song would have been nice, but that had been a fast turn-around. And the cover happened to be insanely good. Not at all what he had been expecting, but @Asshole_Who_Doesn’t_Respond_To_DMs_In_A_Timely_Manner had totally changed the style of the song to fit with his own style of playing and it still really worked. “not at all what i was expecting u to play but this is rly good” 

And fuck Izzy’s statement that he couldn’t go around adding people to group chats. This guy was clearly integral to making the chat the coolest chat the world had ever seen. “Btw im adding u to a group chat”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> School's starting in six days but it's going to be online and classes apparently don't start until three weeks in so I don't know how much productivity and learning will actually happen or if I'll just be sitting around pretending like I'm learning things to keep my teachers from feeling like they're completely worthless. If teachers were taught (and then knew) how to operate google suite- mainly google classroom and google meet- that would be fucking helpful. But no, the district went and bought a whole new learning platform and now no one will know how to use anything. Also, the district won't email us anything, because why would students need to know that the district is switching platforms or is completely changing up the schedule or even just what to fucking do on Wednesday. I'm just lucky to have a parent that's a teacher, but they don't tell him jack shit either so who knows what'll happen. The last email I got was about signing up for fall sports. Like that's a good idea. Touch the ball that everyone else's dirty ass hands has touched, that sounds like fun. Can't imagine how sanitary that locker room must be. Anyway, if the entire school system crumbles and falls, sucks for them. But I would like to be given more information. Not a fan of life just being out of my control.


	15. Chapter Fifteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Izzy’s new group chat got taken over by the raving lunatic known as Axl Rose.

The best way to end an eight-hour workday was with a late lunch of scrambled eggs. That is if your name was Izzy and you made what could be considered the world’s best scrambled eggs. The secret was the excessive butter and cream cheese that was added. Then Izzy would pretend it was healthy by adding a couple scoops of pizza sauce. Tomatoes were technically a vegetable. How Izzy didn’t want to end an eight-hour workday was by facilitating Axl’s asinine group chat idea. However, Izzy knew that if he didn’t create the group chat soon, Axl would either grow bored and make the group chat himself or harass him with a string of never-ending angry-face emojis. He was at least going to wait until he had eaten his lunch though. Such delicious scrambled eggs didn’t deserve to be ruined by boring conversations with stupid people.

After eating an incredible lunch, Izzy figured Axl’s patience with him was probably wearing thin, and with much disgruntlement, he made the fucking group chat. “alright axl heres your group chat. knock yourself out.”

Axl’s response was to rename the chat “Bible Discussion/ Study Meeting”. Real funny Axl. It wasn’t the first time Izzy had questioned their friendship and it probably wouldn’t be the last, but he let the group chat name slide. For now.

“ok everyone; name age location/state n a pic of the pants ur wearing”

Okay Axl, what the fuck. Izzy tried to find an angle that hid most of the stains and holes in his sweatpants. Leave it to Axl to come up with such stupidity while he was wearing his rattiest- and comfiest- pair of pants. 

Duff sent a picture of rainbow platypus pants. Axl sent a picture of mostly leg and shorts so short Izzy wanted to set his phone on fire and then go pour bleach in his eyes. Whoever let Axl purchase such articles of clothing should be beheaded with an olive fork. “where the fuck do they sell shit like that?”

“one of my sisters works for a print shop, she got the fabric custom printed and then one of my other sisters made the pants” Izzy had been talking about the shorts Axl was wearing so he could hunt down the creator of such a monstrosity and murder them, but it was good to know that rainbow platypus pants weren’t for sale on Amazon. Made sense. Jeff Bezos wasn’t cool enough to sell such a work of art. The conversation shifted towards musical tastes and Axl tried to start a rant about Izzy’s decision to ditch Lafayette for the west coast, but Duff fortunately cut him off. Unfortunately, it was with a question Izzy was expected to have the answer to. “im going to a pride parade on sunday, either of you have advice for what to wear?”

“i had just gotten to LA a couple days before the parade and it was 100something degrees out so i just went in a pair of boxers.” Honesty was a good policy. Izzy’s half-hearted participation in Pride had been to hang out with friends, then get drunk, stoned, and laid. Not exactly in that order, but it had been a good time.

“just go to party city or whatever and get urself whatever rainbow shit theyve got; also izzy wtf”

Pretty rich coming from the guy who’s definition of shorts was what Izzy assumed to be the leather edition of men’s lingerie. “it was a whole lot more than what some other people were wearing.” 

Axl’s complaints about what Izzy had decided to wear to pride fizzled out pretty quickly after that. “we rly need more ppl in this group chat”

“who would we add.” Izzy knew that once Axl wanted something he’d go out of his way to get it, but Izzy hoped he could at least steer him in a direction away from adding random unwilling participants into group chats. Especially group chats with flagrantly sexual names.

“theres that @SlashHudson guy”

“you cant just add random people to group chats Axl.”

“i know a guy thatd probably be down to join the group chat” Thank you Duff. Maybe adding someone else would distract Axl from harassing that @SlashHudson guy. Axl had gone silent though, even when Duff added his friend, some guy named Steven who talked a fuck of a lot and was way too happy for a normal person, and that worried Izzy. His suspicions were confirmed when Axl replied after ten minutes of Steven talking about a weird combination of pugs and KISS. 

“im adding someone to the group chat; his handle is @SlashHudson n he plays epic guitar solos” Goddamnit. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is the last update before school starts. If updates slow down it's because my teachers are holding me hostage and forcing me to do homework. If you guys want, I can publish the recipes for Duff's Brother's "extra cheesy mac n' cheese" and Izzy's "world's best scrambled eggs". They're all recipes that I've made up and they don't have any actual measurements, but there is a method. Kinda. It's mostly just throwing stuff into a pan and then heating it up on the stove.


	16. Chapter Sixteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Steven’s bright and enthusiastic personality was released into the group chat.

Somehow Steven had gone from having no friends at all really to having both a best friend and being part of a group chat. This week was the coolest. The people on the new group chat were the coolest. Everything was the coolest. Steven had already sent in the mandatory “name, age, location, pants” survey. Unfortunately, his pants weren’t as epically awesome as Duff’s rainbow platypus pants, but Steven hoped it wasn’t too much of an important contest to win. 

“anyone have any cool pets?” Steven hoped that was an alright question to ask. He wasn’t really sure what cool people talked about, but everyone liked animals, right?

“i live in a 400sq ft apartment in downtown LA. fuck no.”

“i have my dog chloe; shes currently trying to turn one of my tshirts into a new chew toy”

“heres my dog shadow” Steven took a picture of his pug, who was currently nesting in his unmade bed.

“cool.” Steven started to tell the story of unsuccessfully trying to catch frogs and how it was probably for the best that he and his brother hadn’t caught any since Shadow would likely try to eat them. Duff threw in his two cents now and then, “yeah, frog catching is really only successful in the dark” but Izzy had gone silent. 

Crap, he’d talked too much again. He should’ve let someone else guide the conversation instead of rambling. Duff had probably only been contributing because he was nice.

“what music do you guys listen to.” Or maybe Izzy just didn’t talk much. Steven tried to remain positive. He also tried to talk a little less and leave space for Duff and Izzy to steer the conversation, but Duff seemed happy to let him talk about whatever he wanted and Izzy spoke little to not at all so Steven had no idea what he was thinking. Hopefully, he wasn’t accidentally being majorly annoying.

If he was being majorly annoying, Izzy didn’t mention it. Izzy was just that cool. Most people just flat out told him to shut up. Getting Izzy to join the conversation was turning out to be insanely difficult. Maybe later he’d investigate- or rather stalk- his Instagram account. 

Oh, that reminded him. There was a whole fourth person on this group chat. Some guy named Axl who was apparently Izzy’s old friend from Indiana who wore… leather boxer briefs? Steven didn’t know. 

He was just about to ask where this Axl dude was when Axl himself messaged the group chat. “im adding someone to the group chat; his handle is @SlashHudson n he plays epic guitar solos”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> None of you guys wanted the recipe for Izzy's "world's best scrambled eggs" but I'm giving it to you anyway.
> 
> Ingredients:  
> \- two to three eggs  
> \- twoish spoonfuls of pizza sauce  
> \- around a tablespoon of butter  
> \- around a tablespoon and a half of cream cheese  
> \- a large handful of Mexican shredded cheese or one to two broken up slices of cheddar cheese  
> \- a large handful of mozzarella cheese
> 
> Steps:  
> 1\. Mix all the ingredients together.  
> 2\. Pour all that shit into a pan and stir it on low heat until there's no visible raw egg. Make sure the butter and cheese melt and become fully incorporated into the egg/tomato sauce/dairy product mixture. The secret to good scrambled eggs is to cook them slowly with lots of stirring.  
> 3\. Serve with salt and pepper. If you're feeling fancy, you can add a piece of toast.


	17. Chapter Seventeen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Duff met Slash and was reminded of some of the reasons he’s bisexual.

“im adding someone to the group chat; his handle is @SlashHudson n he plays epic guitar solos”

“axl. for the last time. you cant just add people to group chats they dont want to be added to.”

“no its fine hes cool” Izzy didn’t seem to think it was fine. In fact, he sounded rather ticked off, but Duff didn’t know if that was special for Axl or if that was just Izzy’s personality in general. 

A notification popped up that Axl had added @SlashHudson to the group chat, but after that there was a poignant silence. “so uh, im assuming your name is slash, welcome to the insanity that is our group chat” That was a friendly, welcoming statement right? 

Izzy wasn’t immediately removing @SlashHudson out of the group chat, so hopefully welcoming the guy was the right move. Duff was somewhat reassured of his decision when Axl followed up with “come on man introduce urself; name age location/state and a pic of the pants ur wearing”

Duff could see Slash was typing, but it took a good five minutes for him to reply. “hi, my name’s slash, i’m almost 15, and from london” His message was soon accompanied by a picture of dark-gray fitted jeans. 

“i didn’t know there was a state called london” Sweet Jesus, Duff hoped Steven was just tired and not genuinely that dumb. 

“there isnt u dumbass”

“london is a city in england steven.”

“oh” Steven then proceeded to bombard Slash with a wide variety of seemingly random questions. Favorite song- no idea but Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin were pretty cool, favorite food- anything he didn’t have to make himself- which was a solid answer, Duff appreciated any food made by other people that was then given to him, and favorite animal- snakes. What the hell. Snakes were terrifying. Not that he’d ever had a traumatic experience with finding a snake in his bed or anything. He still had no idea which of his seven older siblings had done it. He had his guesses, but never any proof.

Duff decided to take this time to stalk Slash’s Instagram, which in his opinion was a much better way to get to know someone than asking them random questions. Or at least it would have been if there had been more than half a dozen posts. Okay, maybe that was unfair. Based on the abruptness of Slash’s messages and the time it took him to respond, Duff guessed he was shy. Or he didn’t care about the group chat. His profile backed up the shy theory though, especially with the complete lack of selfies- even his profile pic was just a drawing of a snake in a tophat. Duff really wanted a face he could associate with the name though, so he decided to go through the posts just to double check that there wasn’t a better alternative to thinking of Slash as a snake wearing a tophat.

All the posts seemed to be videos. The first one was audio of someone- Duff assumed it was Slash- playing a guitar cover of the main riff Aerosmith’s Back in the Saddle. The guitar work was incredible. If Duff were anywhere close to being as good as that at playing any instrument, he would be bragging constantly. Unfortunately, the visuals accompanying the audio was just another drawing, this time of Joe Perry. The next video was similar, except this time it was the solo from Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love with a drawing of a crazy looking guitar. The next two videos were much the same- how did someone get this good at guitar anyway- epic guitar playing with a drawing of something mostly related to the song being covered. 

Guitar cover number five was different though. This was a straight recording of Slash playing the guitar, Duff guessed it was because it was an older post and Slash hadn’t gotten whatever he was now using to record, but it finally was a video that gave Duff an idea of what Slash looked like. Was the video insanely zoomed in such that he could only see the body of a guitar and Slash’s right hand? Yes. Was it the sexiest hand he’d ever seen and reminded him that coming out as bi had been totally worth it? Also yes. Was he kinda screwed now that he had a massive crush on a random guy from London and was now responsible for not making things weird in the group chat; all because of a minute and a half long video of Slash’s right hand as he played guitar? Maybe. Duff cycled back to the group chat.

Steven had talked a lot. Axl had talked a lot too, although not as much as Steven, mostly about himself. Slash had only spoken when directly asked a question, further cementing Duff’s hypothesis that he was shy. Duff had never thought about shyness as an attractive quality before now, but he’d gone through a lot of self-discovery in the past five minutes. “hey slash, cool guitar playing”

“thank you; its one am here in london now; talk to you all later” Crap. Duff hoped he hadn’t just scared Slash off. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I sounded pissed off about school before, just know that I am infinitely more pissed off now. Instead of learning actual things, the district has decided that the best way to spend the first two weeks of school is to force all of us to do these stupid ice breaker activities. Like two truths and a lie, asking half-personal questions type of shit. You've all probably experienced this at some point. It sucks. That's not how you meet people.   
> Anyway, one of the activities was each person picked a number between one and ten, and each number corresponded to a question (you didn't see the questions until after picking the number) that you then had to answer. Here's the problem. Question three was "what cartoon character would you most want to snuggle with?" Now apparently, I'm the only person in my friend group that thought that question was inappropriate but come on. Once you're over the age of fourteen and can feel the magic known as sexual attraction, cuddling with any character that talks is pretty fucking weird. Imagine a sixteen-year-old guy answering that question. If the character is anthropomorphic in any way, that guy is essentially fucked. Because it will sound like he wants to have sex the character. I don't watch cartoons. The last animated movie I watched was South Park. Who am I gonna answer from that movie? Kenny McCormick? Fuck no! He's like ten years old! That's super gross! Do I pick Terrence or Phillip? Fuck no! Those are adult men! That's super gross! And you can apply that logic to pretty much any character that talks.
> 
> For those of you who are rightfully wondering what cartoon character I would like to snuggle with, it's Hobbs. Why? Because he's a fucking stuffed animal.


	18. Chapter Eighteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How the universe continued to fuck with Slash and threw him into a group chat that had a hot guy in it.

Slash tried to scroll as quickly as possible through this new group chat he was apparently now a part of, trying to get a feel for who else was in the chat and what sort of vibe they were going for. It looked like mostly a spam chat where they all just shared random thoughts. The group chat also seemed relatively new and most of them didn’t seem to know each other very well, so hopefully, it wouldn’t be like school or the bands he’d half-joined where they all knew each other and he wound up feeling left out of the conversation. 

Okay, they had all introduced themselves with the basic personal information and a picture of the pants they were wearing. Weird, but significantly better than sending in a picture of his face. No one had said anything since he’d been added, which hopefully gave him some time to figure out what pants to take a picture of. The pants they were wearing in their photos all seemed to be some variation on comfort pants or pajama pants for the most part. One guy had rainbow platypus pajama pants, which was awesome. Slash wished he had the self-confidence to own an article of clothing that made that big of a statement. Let alone send a photo of it to a group of total strangers. He was getting up to figure out what pants he should happen to be wearing when they inevitably asked him to introduce himself when the new message icon popped up.

“so uh, im assuming your name is slash, welcome to the insanity that is our group chat” Platypus pants guy. He seemed nice, but his message meant that Slash’s time to find the perfect pair of pants was dwindling. He began tearing through his dresser. Dark grey sweatpants? No, those had weird lighter spots from where he’d stained them with tomato sauce and then tried to get the stains out using not-very-good stain remover. Slightly darker grey sweatpants? No, those ones had a poorly sewn patch over the knee where there had once been a hole. Flannel pajama pants with Christmas themed snowmen? Fuck no. 

“come on man introduce urself; name age location/state and a pic of the pants ur wearing” Shit. Light grey sweatpants? No, those were covered in wrinkles. He had one chance to make a first impression for these guys and he was already fucking it up. Light blue jeans? No, those had more holes than denim. Slash wasn’t sure why he’d bought them in the first place. Stupid school uniform pants that looked bad on everybody but especially him? No. For obvious reasons. Dark grey jeans that looked like they had been left folded up at the back of his dresser for the past twenty years? Maybe. He was probably ruining the point of the exercise by specifically picking what pants to take a photo of, but at this point, he didn’t really care. 

Now for the message. “hi, my name’s slash, i’m almost 15, and from london” Did that sound too forced? Well, it wasn’t like he could un-send the message and write a better one. That’d come off super weird. Nope, he should just continue on and take the stupid pants pic. For the hundredth time, Slash wished he could just be fucking normal and not have to worry about appearances. 

“i didn’t know there was a state called london” Slash couldn’t tell whether that statement was a dig at his non-American nationality or if this guy was just tired and wasn’t thinking straight. Speaking of which, it was around twelve-thirty, he should clean up the giant pile of discarded pants before his mom came in and questioned what the fuck he was doing. 

“there isnt u dumbass” So being rude and blunt was just part of @A_Rose, or rather Axl’s, personality, and hadn’t been specifically targeted at him. Slash began shoving the pile of clothing into his closet. 

“london is a city in england steven.”

“oh; hey slash, whats your favorite song” 

“i’m not sure i have a favorite song, but i like almost anything by aerosmith and led zeppelin” Slash hoped that was a decent answer. Based on the previous messages in the chat it seemed like that was relatively close to what everyone else seemed to like.

“cool, do you like KISS? my favorite song is probably rock n roll all nite but all of their songs are really good” Eh, KISS was alright. They got a little too commercial starting in the late seventies. 

“will u shut up about kiss already”

“D: but KISS is the best band ever”

“no queen is the best now stfu”

Slash took this as an opportunity to excuse himself from the conversation and glance over everyone’s profile. If one of them was secretly a serial killer or something, he’d be more likely to find out by looking through their profile than by listening to them argue over a sub-par band. First up, Steven. His profile was similar to Axl’s in that it was mostly pictures of himself with various musician and band-related posts sprinkled in. However, unlike Axl, most of the pictures weren’t technically selfies, instead, they were pictures of him with his dog or him sitting behind a drum kit. 

“what about you slash; do you have any pets; whats your favorite animal?”

“snakes are pretty cool” Maybe he shouldn’t have said that. Most people weren’t snake people. Slash went back to looking over profiles. Next up, Duff, or better referred to as “Platypus Pants Guy”. His profile seemed to mostly be- oh fuck. The universe really did love to fuck with him. Shit. Of course Duff had to be a badass, blue-haired god of punk. Not only that, but when his posts weren’t pictures of him looking perfect, they were videos of him being really funny and talented. And still looking perfect. What the hell. Axl should have warned him that the group chat had a hot guy in it. He would’ve put more effort into finding a suitable pair of pants. Or maybe it would’ve been better if he’d never known how attractive Duff was and he could have lived in blissful ignorance.

“hey slash, cool guitar playing” Slash almost screamed, but he caught himself before he let out more than a yelp. Duff thought his guitar playing was cool! That meant he’d gone through his profile too, and seen all his drawings and listened to all his guitar covers and probably realized that he was too much of a chicken-shit to post selfies or life updates like a normal person. Fuck. 

The best course of action now would be to quickly thank Duff and then excuse himself from the situation as quickly as possible. “thank you; its one am here in london now; talk to you all later”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember when I said I was going to try and keep the chapters of this fic on the shorter side? Well, I'm a liar. It rained yesterday and the day before so now all the smoke and melting plastic-and-fecal-matter smell is gone. Yay rain.   
> I kinda want to host a Guns n' Roses Secret Santa sorta fic exchange. Would that be cool? Like, everyone would submit a prompt and then everyone would be assigned a prompt, and yay, we all get GnR fics. Or are there only like, two people who would be down and it would be super lame. Let me know in the comments if you'd be interested.


	19. Chapter Nineteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Axl survived another shift at McDonald’s.

Well, that had gone extraordinarily meh. Axl had hoped that the introduction of Slash would turn the conversation towards music that wasn’t KISS, but Slash turned out to be a total wet blanket and hardly talked at all. Not only that, but @idiot_who_only_talks_about_boring_shit took that as an opportunity to talk about KISS and pugs. For the ten-thousandth time. Of course, the only person who talked had to talk about the most annoying topics on the planet. Then the conversation had fizzled out and this morning he’d woken up with a text from Izzy chastising him to quote “stop calling people dumbasses and idiots. youre the one who wanted a group chat in the first place.” Really, coming from the guy who’s favorite words were all derived from the word “fuck”. 

And now he was stuck in McDonald’s again. Fucking customer service jobs. Who actually ate forty chicken nuggets, a large fries, a chocolate milkshake, and a baked apple pie. For lunch. And he’d seen the inside of this asswipe’s car. She clearly didn’t have a husband or kids. This idiot was eating that entire order herself. Not to mention that upon being told that the forty-piece Chicken McNugget was only available online from select locations that weren’t this particular McDonald’s, she threw a massive hissy fit and demanded to speak to the manager. The joke was on her since it was just him and two other minimum-wage teenage employees at the store. 

Fucking Karens. Axl wondered if they knew that as much as they wanted to speak to a manager, sometimes managers might not want to speak to them and instead went on two-hour long breaks while all the employees pretended to look the other way. Eventually, she calmed down and ordered six boxes of six-piece Chicken McNuggets and a box of four Chicken McNuggets. She couldn’t have made it easy for him and just ordered two extra nuggets. No, he had to suffer and enter in an extra item instead of just bringing a number up to seven boxes so that she could have exactly forty chicken nuggets. Long story short, he was not thankful that she chose McDonald’s. Hopefully, the money he was sending home was being put into keeping Stuart and Amy clothed and fed, and not into Stephen’s drinking habit. Then this interaction might have been slightly worth it. 

Axl was trying to casually hide the fact that he was playing Angry Birds on his phone while waiting for another car to pull up when the drive-thru monitor showed movement at the order-taking stop. It wasn’t a car though. Someone had decided to walk up to the drive-thru. They did realize that this line was supposed to be for cars and they were technically standing in the middle of a road right? Fucking idiots. There was an order counter inside for this exact purpose. “Hey, thanks for choosing McDonald’s, what can I get you?”

“Hi, just a small strawberry banana smoothie please.” What the actual fuck. There was an actual smoothie shop just five minutes away.

“Alright, total’s two seventy-nine. It’ll be available at the window. Thanks for eating at McDonald’s”

The person who walked up was not the person Axl had expected. Axl had expected some sort of goodie-two-shoes pre-med student who had piled up so much work for themselves that they didn’t have time to go into the restaurant itself or else some philosophy-major neo-spiritualist hippie that thought everyone was a vehicle for spiritual energy or the driving force behind their soul or some equally moronic bullshit. Instead, it was a pretty woman somewhere between the age of sixteen to twenty-three, with dark chocolate-colored hair and clear eyes, who handed him a crumpled five-dollar bill and took the smoothie from his outstretched hand with a quiet “thanks”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're reading this thinking "hmm, this is suspiciously like a filler chapter," you're probably right. Remember how I kinda wanted to host a Guns n' Roses Secret Santa sorta fic exchange? Like, everyone would submit a prompt and then everyone would be assigned a prompt, and yay, we all get GnR fics. Only one person said they were interested in the comments, but I still really want to do it. Am I crazy in thinking there're more people that would be interested or are there more of you out there? Please leave feedback in the comments, even if it is "GothBunny, you're crazy and this is a dumb idea". I won't real your comment and then curl up in a blanket crying if you tell me this is a dumb idea, I promise. I would really appreciate the feedback.


	20. Chapter Twenty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Izzy’s calm morning plans got hijacked again and the epidemic of stupid people reached emergency levels.

Instead of landing on the snooze button of his alarm clock, Izzy’s hand smashed against his bedside table. Okay, fine, he’d get up. Fuck, that had hurt. The alarm continued to scream that it was five-thirty in the morning, which, while insanely early, meant he only had an hour to get to work. This was the one hour of the day when he hated his job. At least his apartment’s water heater only took half an hour to warm up. It wasn’t like his showers only took five minutes and because he didn’t have the time to wait they were always freezing cold or anything. 

He was shaving over the kitchen sink while making breakfast, because multitasking, when his phone chimed. Who the fuck was awake at ten till six besides him? Then Izzy remembered he had been forced to join that stupid group chat and there was such a thing as time zones. If it was Axl demanding attention Izzy was deleting his account and creating a new one that wasn’t followed by a certain annoying fuck. He knocked the razor against the edge of the kitchen sink in an attempt to whack the residual shaving cream out from between the blades before setting the razor down and turning to finish making his breakfast. The “bagel”, call him an elitist but California grocery stores did not sell real bagels, only lies with holes cut out of the middle, was done toasting and the egg was close enough to cooked; therefore breakfast was officially ready. His phone chimed again.

Trying not to drip raw egg yoke on his phone, Izzy concluded that he had better deal with whatever was bothering Axl than letting someone else do it. Friendships were so weird; you could hate someone’s guts immeasurably and yet you’d still let them drag you into their shit. He never should’ve agreed to that group chat.

It wasn’t Axl, it was Steven. “hey, anyone else awake?” and then, “im kinda bored and could use a friend”

Stupid fucking feelings. Since he was alone, Izzy was stuck taking his anger out on his breakfast sandwich. Even someone as dumb as Steven seemed to be should be able to make friends that he could contact early in the morning and weren’t random strangers on the internet. But no, Izzy just had to be constantly thrust into the company of people with personalities similar to golden retriever puppies. “im awake steven. what is it.”

“nothing really i guess; i just wanted someone to talk to”

“im leaving for work in twenty minutes, you have until then.” Why did he do this to himself?

“thanks Izzy! where do you work?”

“i work at an italian restaurant near my apartment.”

“woah, so youre like a chef or something?”

“they just hired him bc they needed someone to clean the shit out of the urinals” Of course now Axl decided to join in. Fuck this.

“no, im not a chef. and no, i don’t clean up after idiots who dont know how to use a urinal properly. I mostly clean up tables and wash dishes.”

“but still, thats like a whole real job”

“welcome to the real world steven, where ppl r slaves to corporate america and us adults have to work for our living” Fucking hell, this group chat might’ve actually been a good idea if Axl hadn’t been a part of it.

“i thought we were all similar ages”

“steven dont be an idiot” So much for his quiet and peaceful morning. 

“steven, axl and i just graduated highschool a month ago. axl, stop being a cunt and play nice.”

That seemed to shut the both of them up. Izzy used the blissful silence to his advantage, finishing his breakfast and biking towards the restaurant to start his eight-hour shift. Unfortunately, the blissful silence was short-lived, as he felt his phone vibrate in his back pocket while he was locking up his bike. It was a private message from Steven.

“does axl not like me?” Goddamnit. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone else ever remember past arguments they had over two months ago and get all fired up again because the other person was stupid and wrong? Because same :') If you replace words with numbers in your typing, such as using the character "2" to abbreviate the word "to", you are not an adult. Listen to Weird Al Yankovic, "You should never/ Write words using numbers/ Unless you're seven/ Or your name is Prince". Anyway, enough of my angered rambling. Sorry about not updating on Sunday, I got busy. Doing very important things for American democracy and definitely not celebrating national vodka day. Or maybe I was doing both. Who knows? (I know.)
> 
> Also! Only four people have signed up for my fanfic gift exchange. The deadline is Halloween, so sign up quickly! Here's the link to the google form: https://forms.gle/Rikro9xh3d9vURp46
> 
> Here's the link to the Weird Al song I quoted, if you ever get into an argument with someone who doesn't know how letters work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc


	21. Chapter Twenty-One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Steven experienced both Axl and a thunderstorm on the same morning, which almost turned out to be too much to handle.

The woodpecker was back. Last year it had built its nest on a bit of the roof directly above Steven’s bedroom and had promptly gotten up at eight-thirty every morning to hammer directly outside his window. Steven wasn’t really sure why the woodpecker picked his house since his house, along with the rest of the houses on his street, was built mainly of red brick and plastic trim, but his main issue with the bird was the volume and time at which it decided to peck at his windowsill. He really didn’t want to get up, but the woodpecker was making it impossible to sleep. So much for lazy summer mornings.

Shadow, realizing Steven was awake, decided to jump on his face and wine that she needed to be let out. Not for the first time, Steven wished he had had the patience to train her to use a human toilet. He’d tried for two days after seeing a youtube video of it happening, but he’d quickly lost interest. 

Pushing Shadow off his face, Steven stumbled around his bedroom in the dark for a bit, located something a bit more suitable for leaving the house than the boxers he’d slept in, and found Shadow’s leash. Normally the sun was up around three hours before eight-forty-five, but this morning his room had been kinda dark and gray-ish. Weird. Shadow was quiet too, which was strange. Normally she’d see a squirrel or a bird and start barking her face off like the world was ending and the only way to stop it was to wake the neighbors with high-volume screeches. 

Steven was just turning to go back inside when the mystery of the quiet dog was explained. Big gray clouds started to roll in and blot out what little sunlight there was and within seconds sheets of rain and hail were falling out of the sky like a malfunctioning snow-cone machine. 

Normally the early summer thunderstorms happened in the afternoon when everyone else was also awake and so everything was therefore fine, but the combination of the sudden thunderstorm and being the only one awake in the house was not fine. Shadow didn’t seem to like it either, since she ran upstairs and hid under his bed the moment they got inside. 

Okay, now what. He obviously couldn’t wake anyone in his family up just because of a thunderstorm, and his mom had stopped being comforting awhile ago. So Steven did the next best thing, he hid under a blanket and decided to message his friends. But what to say? Everyone else in the group chat was super cool and while Steven wasn’t exactly sure what “being cool” entailed, he was pretty sure it did not entail being afraid of a little rain. And hail. And lightning.

“hey, anyone else awake?” Yeah, that a decent message that wasn’t too clingy or un-cool. Or maybe it wasn’t because no one responded. “im kinda bored and could use a friend”

Crap, maybe he shouldn’t have sent that last bit. It looked like Axl had seen his message, but no one had replied yet. Thunder rolled in from outside and his bed shook slightly from the sound vibrations. Shadow barked from her hiding place under the bed, but other than that the house was completely silent.

“im awake steven. what is it.” Izzy replied! Even though it was only six words, it made Steven ridiculously happy. Izzy cared, at least, enough to ask him a follow-up question.

“nothing really i guess” Yeah, nothing except for the fact that he was afraid of thunderstorms. “i just wanted someone to talk to”

“im leaving for work in twenty minutes, you have until then.” Twenty minutes was plenty. But what should he talk about? The last thing Steven wanted to do was seem boring or childish and drive Izzy away. Especially since Izzy was always nice to him and always answered his questions, even if they were probably stupid ones. 

“thanks Izzy! where do you work?”

“i work at an italian restaurant near my apartment.” 

Steven knew of highschoolers who worked counters at fast food places or coffee shops, but the phrase “Italian restaurant” sounded fancy. “woah, so youre like a chef or something?”

“they just hired him bc they needed someone to clean the shit out of the urinals” Was Axl always so mean or was he only like this when talking to him? It wouldn’t be surprising if it was just because Steven was sometimes accidentally annoying, but he hoped that wasn’t it. Also, who pooped in urinals? 

“no, im not a chef. and no, i don’t clean up after idiots who dont know how to use a urinal properly. I mostly clean up tables and wash dishes.”

Okay, that made sense. That was still a step up from standing behind a dirty fast-food counter and saying “Hi, welcome to McDonald’s, what can I get for you today?” over and over again. “but still, thats like a whole real job”

“welcome to the real world steven, where ppl r slaves to corporate america and us adults have to work for our living” Steven didn’t know what Axl meant by “corporate America”, but he didn’t need to in order to tell that Axl clearly thought he was an idiot who was asking stupid questions.

“i thought we were all similar ages”

“steven dont be an idiot” Yep, there it was. Steven couldn’t say he hadn’t been expecting it, but it still hurt to be disliked. He tried to sound smart and cool and act like he was good-friend material, but it always blew up in his face. Maybe it would’ve been better if he hadn’t messaged the group chat at all and had instead just waited out the thunderstorm.

“steven, axl and i just graduated highschool a month ago. axl, stop being a cunt and play nice.” And now he’d gotten Izzy upset. Great.

But Izzy made it sound like Axl was just normally like that. Yeah, it would still suck, but it would suck less to know he wasn’t being singled out. Izzy seemed to know Axl really well, maybe he could private message Izzy and ask. But asking someone if someone else liked you seemed textbook un-cool. On the other hand, he had to know. “does axl not like me?”

“no, axl hates everybody. hes just taking it out on you because youre happy all the time and the world hasnt broken you yet.” What the heck did that mean? Steven liked being happy! He didn’t want the world to break him! “if it makes you feel better, i think youre alright.”

It made Steven feel much better. Izzy was always so cool. “thanks izzy :)”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's my birthday! You all are now obligated to go out and get yourselves some cake :D


	22. Chapter Twenty-Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Duff got himself some Pride gear as well as an opportunity to face-time Slash.

People in Seattle did not know how to parallel park. Now, the people of Seattle didn’t know how to park in general, or drive for that matter, but those facts were unrelated to Duff’s current problem which was getting a honda odyssey between a car that was a mere nine inches over the line and a second car that hadn’t even bothered to try and park correctly. It was called parallel parking for a reason asshole, and the reason was that your car is supposed to be parallel with the sidewalk so that he, Duff, did not have to park so far away from the place he was trying to go that he was further from the building now than he had been before he left the house. 

Of course, if his mom had listened to his totally legitimate point that since all his older siblings had moved out there was absolutely no reason at all to still have a car that sat eight people and was at least fourteen years old, he would’ve been able to squeeze into that parking space but no, here he was paying twenty dollars an hour for a parking space at least ten uphill blocks from the Party at Display and Costume store, the closest thing to Party City within a fifteen-mile radius that didn’t involve driving all the way into Redmond for. Yes, Axl was kinda, well, an Ax-hole, but his advice to just buy as much Rainow stuff from a party supply store wasn’t bad.

Or at least, it didn’t seem like a bad idea until Duff was staring at Party at Display and Costume’s massive selection of rainbow costume items feeling overwhelmed. Trying to stick to a limited budget of twenty dollars was making it worse. He hadn’t wanted to ask Kim to buy him stuff for Pride, but he desperately needed assistance. “im at party display and costume looking for rainbow shit please help”

“i have rainbow colored hairspray mardi gras necklaces and some bi flags for you already and if you are a good boy between now and sunday i will help do your makeup; just buy a feather boa and a tie-dye kit or something” Tie-dye kit reminded him too much of Matt’s idea of a Pride costume, but Kim had helped a lot. Duff needed a second opinion though, so he took a picture of the wall of rainbow costume party supplies and sent it to the group chat with the caption “what do i get for pride please help; i only have a budget of forty dollars and half of that already went to stupid seattle parking”

Steven’s response was fast but unhelpful. “you should buy the pink hairspray and dye your hair pink”

“my friend kim already has rainbow hairspray shes letting me borrow and also no, i will not dye my hair pink”

“izzy, slash, tell duff he should dye his hair pink”

“do whatever the fuck you want to your hair. just buy a rainbow boa and stay the fuck away from glitter would be my suggestion.” Izzy had been slightly more helpful. Duff grabbed a rainbow boa.

“slash, back me up; duff would look totally epic with pink hair”

“i think you look totally epic already without pink hair, but don’t you have pants with rainbow platypuses on them? if you’re looking for something low-budget and rainbow-themed”

Slash was such a fucking genius Duff could’ve kissed him. Duff could’ve kissed him anyway, but for the purposes of that statement, Duff was going to overlook his growing crush and the fact that the aforementioned crush thought he looked totally epic. “slash youre a fucking genius thank you so much”

Duff’s phone buzzed several times as he paid for the boa and rainbow shoelaces he planned to put in his Doc Martin’s and continued to buzz on the walk back to his car. Pulling it out, he discovered that Steven was continuing to make his case for why he should have pink hair by going through selfies he had posted on Instagram and using some sort of photo-editing app to turn his hair pink. It didn’t look that bad actually, but he still wasn’t going to do it. 

“im not sure how i feel about you going through my posts and doing stuff to my appearance”

“youre just saying that because you know im right, guys, back me up here”

“fuck no im staying out of this. steven know when to pick your battles.”

“i guess i think duff looks good both ways” Slash thought he looked good! Duff debated flirting back but decided he’d rather get totally rejected in a private chat rather than in front of a group. 

“just to spite you im going to dye my hair bright green steven” Then Duff switched conversations to start a private chat with Slash. 

“i think you look totally epic too, wanna face time in around fifteen minutes once I get home?” Ah yes, he was the king of smooth. It was honestly a fucking miracle that he managed to get any dates at all, ever. Slash took at least two minutes typing out his reply but when the message finally came through Duff sighed in relief. 

“im about to eat dinner, but ill be available in about forty minutes if thats okay?” Yes that was okay, that was better than okay, Slash could’ve asked him to face time at three in the fucking morning and that would’ve been okay. “thanks for the compliment by the way”

Duff almost died from happiness in the middle of the Pay-to-Park parking garage. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't even drive and I'm frustrated with Seattle's traffic problems. Also, I got a new amp, spent three days making fun of their list of safety instructions and warnings, and then accidentally gave myself an electric shock this morning because I'm just that talented. Don't worry, I'm fine, but talk about being stupid.


	23. Chapter Twenty-Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Slash learned that there were actually things in the world that were more terrifying than spiders, and that maybe forty minutes is too long to be freaking out over a simple video call.

“im about to eat dinner, but ill be available in about forty minutes if thats okay?” And then Slash dropped his phone and buried his face into the duvet and tried not to scream, as if his phone was some sort of magic genie lamp and Duff was just going to materialize in the middle of his room. Alright, he had forty minutes to figure out how the hell he was going to prepare for this video call. The “eating dinner” bit had been to buy him enough time to finish freaking out. Yes, Duff had said that he looked “totally epic”, but Slash was well aware that there was absolutely no evidence to back up that claim. How could Duff come to that conclusion when Slash had never uploaded a picture of his face to the internet, ever? So step one, make himself look at least decently presentable. 

Step one, to the surprise of no one ever, was stressful and difficult. There was one positive thing about school uniforms and it was that Slash didn’t have to go through the task which was figuring out what articles of clothing to put on his body every day. His mom literally created outfits for a living, it shouldn’t have been this hard. Leather jacket and sunglasses were usually his go-to, but wearing sunglasses and a jacket inside would be super weird. So instead he was planning to officially introduce himself to the insanely attractive guy from Seattle who played three different instruments and somehow thought he, Slash, looked “totally epic” wearing a band t-shirt and jeans. There were probably shirts that looked better on him, but Slash didn’t want to come off as a try-hard, and wearing a button-down in the middle of the summer would probably give off that.

Step two was to shove all rejected articles of clothing and other various messiness into his closet. This step, at least compared to step one, was super easy. It’d be a massive pain when he would inadvertently need to find something later, but that was a problem for future Slash, who would be all too happy to deal with that problem if present Slash didn’t fuck up the approaching video call with Duff. Fluffing and rearranging his hair so that it wasn’t secretly sticking out in places and his fringe lay flat against his face while triple-checking in the mirror that there wasn’t any food stuck between his teeth was step three. Step four was to figure out exactly where and how to balance his phone in order to get the best angle and most optimal lighting. 

Finishing step four with seven minutes to spare proved to be detrimental to his confidence. Fortunately, Slash hadn’t had much confidence to start out with so it didn’t make that much of a difference in his reaction when the message from Duff popped up on his screen.

“hey, shoot me a text when you’re done with dinner; or you can just call me; either way is fine”

Okay. Fuck. Alright, time to do this. He was completely capable of having a conversation with a hot guy who thought he “looked totally epic”. Slash tried to think of any past advice he’d ever gotten for talking to attractive people but all he could come up with was the time his second-year teacher told him to “just be himself” while he was struggling to make friends. That advice hadn’t been helpful then, and it definitely wasn’t helpful at all now. His little brother’s advice in respect to spiders, “don’t be such a wimp”, was arguably more helpful, and Slash repeated that mantra as he replied to Duff. “okay, i’m done with dinner now”

“great, calling now”

Slash was still repeating “don’t be such a wimp” to himself when his phone screen lit up with Duff’s incoming call.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bwahahaha, yes, I'm well aware that I left with no updates for over a month and now I'm leaving you with a cliff-hanger. I'm just so evil like that. Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it and hopefully I'm not as cruel with my next updates.  
> '


	24. Chapter Twenty-Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Axl somehow got himself the number of a maybe-model, or a maybe-sugar baby, he didn’t know.

Pretty-Chick-Who-Didn’t-Understand-How-Drive-Thrus-Worked was back, still without a car, walking towards the drive-thru. Did she not worry about, say, getting run over by a car full of hangry parents and screaming children? Maybe she didn’t need to worry about getting hit by cars because women who were that beautiful literally stopped traffic? It wasn’t likely, but at least now he had a theory, and theorizing about a hot chick was definitely more productive than standing around doing absolutely nothing. Izzy would’ve probably said he was being a creepy perv, but that was his problem. Who ordered a smoothie at a McDonald’s though? Not only that, but who would tip fucking two dollars for it? Axl would understand if someone wanted a smoothie but was too poor to afford anything but the cheapest smoothie possible, but tipping two dollars for it? 

And what the hell did she do for a living? Not many college students had five dollars to blow on sub-par smoothies, and classes weren't even in session anyway. Axl pondered this as she stepped up to the drive-thru microphone and ordered another smoothie, mango-pineapple this time. Maybe she was a model. Models earned good money, right? The chick definitely looked like a model. Maybe she was some rich college professor’s sugar baby. College professors made like, six-figures, right?

Axl’s train of thought was cut short when the woman arrived at order pick-up, sticking her head through the open window and resting her elbows on the sill. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Having her face suddenly so close to his was startling, especially since her lips were painted with something glossy and pink that reminded Axl of strawberry flavored kisses. Remembering himself, he pulled back and handed her the blended-yellow-fruity concoction she had ordered. “Here’s your smoothie.”

“Thanks.” She smiled, which made Axl wish she was in a car and not leaning through the order window and somewhat into his personal space. Popping a boner while fulfilling a customer’s order was definitely not part of McDonald’s “Employee Code of Conduct”. Axl wondered if she was trying to use her beauty to get free stuff from the restaurant or was just genuinely clueless about the effect she had on other people. “Same price as last time?”

“Oh, yeah.” 

Axl took the shiny credit card from her offering fingertips. Maybe she was a sugar baby. He swiped the card and tried to avoid any eye-contact that might reveal his growing problem, while the receipt took its own sweet time to print out and she drummed her fingernails on the metal frame of the window. 

When it was finally done printing, he handed her the receipt and a pen, then shoved his own hands in his pockets to try and subtly re-adjust his pants. He didn’t even know the fucking lady, this was ridiculous. He was a goddamn adult, his days of random and awkward boners were supposed to be over. Axl had finally pulled himself together when she was handing back the pen and signed receipt.

“Bye, handsome.” It caught Axl by surprise, and he stuck his head out the window to see her waiting by the parking lot’s driveway, looking back at him. Their eyes met and she blew him a kiss, before turning left onto State Street and walking off towards the bridge. Axl looked back and forth alternating between the pen and neatly folded receipt in his hand and the now-empty parking lot drive-way. What the actual fuck had just happened. Then he looked at the receipt again and did a double-take. Written in a loopy cursive- who the hell still wrote in cursive- was the message “give me a call sometime pretty boy” and a 765 number. So she was a Lafayette native. Or at least, her phone number was. Axl was mildly suspicious; normal people, especially those of the beautiful woman variety, did not randomly hand out phone numbers. And he wasn’t sure how he felt about being called “pretty boy”. He saved the number as “Maybe-Crazy-But-Definitely-Hot-Chick” and planned to message Izzy for advice as soon as he got off work.

“some random hot chick walked up to the drive-thru during my shift and gave me her #; pls help”

“what help are you looking for?”

“idk asshole maybe something like whether or not i should text her n what i should say or something” Axl thought about Izzy’s past advice. “n don’t tell me i should serenade her or something equally cheesy n gay”

“as a gay i resent that statement, get help from someone else. also the practice of serenading has always had a 100% success rate.”

“really”

“i tried it once and i got a pretty good fuck out of it.” So that wasn’t a particularly reliable statistic was it.

“n what song should i serenade my mystery woman with; oh wise one”

“[ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FshU58nI0Ts ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FshU58nI0Ts)” Okay, smartass. Izzy was probably shaking with laughter right now, and that thought pissed Axl off immensely. 

“okay, fuck u jackass” Maybe the group chat would be more helpful. Although, being more helpful than Izzy was a relatively low bar. “i had a random lady give me her number during work; should i text her”

“was she pretty?” How old was Steven again? Twelve? She had been sexy as hell, but it had been at least five years since he had thought of or referred to someone other than his younger sister as “pretty” and even then it was only when directly prompted.

“yeah, i guess”

“serenade her axl. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FshU58nI0Ts ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FshU58nI0Ts)”

“ur the only one who finds this funny izzy”

“oooh, you should totally do that; sing her love her all i can by KISS”

“I AM NOT SINGING HER ANYTHING” Did everyone just secretly enjoy fucking with him? Axl wouldn’t put it past Izzy, but in all honesty, Steven seemed too stupid to be able to purposefully annoy someone like that. Maybe he genuinely thought he was being helpful.

“hey, izzy, i listened to the song you recommended and i dont get how its supposed to be romantic?” Nevermind, they were both total assholes. No one was that stupid.

“not a fan of monty python?”

“im not a fan of you asshole; i wanted actual advice”

“just text her hi or hows it going or something, and leave me the fuck alone.”

“fuck u too izzy”

“i still dont get it”

Axl didn’t stick around to listen to Izzy patiently explain the conversation to Steven. That dude was too caring for his own good. He tried to cover it up with sarcasm and cutting remarks, but Axl saw right through that bullshit. Izzy’s secret weakness was the puppy people, those two were very nice and joyful but with a certain airhead quality to them, or more often, gave off an air of confused helplessness. A sort of “brave and noble knight who fights to rescue the hapless princess” complex. But enough psychoanalyzing his friend, Axl had a sexy chick to text.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who updated? It was me. If you scream at me in the comments I might update faster. Just a thought. Also, comments let me feel as though my writing is being appreciated and not just published into an empty vacuum of space. Anyone else decorate gingerbread men for the holidays? And if you do, do you eat them head first or feet first? This question really applies to any edible treat that is made to look like a living thing, but gingerbread men came to mind first.


	25. Chapter Twenty-Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Izzy simultaneously got upset over Steven’s apparent lack of self-esteem while also refusing to acknowledge that he ever feels compassion.

“i still dont get it”

“thats alright, you dont need to understand every joke.” Also, the joke would be ruined the minute he explained it, but Izzy left that part out. Something told him that Steven would blame himself for ruining the joke, instead of the simple fact that every joke ever told was ruined upon explanation. Izzy decided to distract Steven from the conversation, as well as the experience that just was Axl Rose, and switch subjects. “so do you have a game plan for persuading duff to dye his hair pink?”

“i thought i was the only one who cared about that” That was maybe fair, but conspiring to get someone to do something mildly stupid was definitely more interesting than listening to Steven talk about KISS or dogs, so… yeah. Also, picking a topic that Steven enjoyed would mean that Izzy wouldn’t have to talk as much. There were pros and cons.

“for conversations sake lets pretend i care”

“okay, but we shouldnt talk about this here; we cant have duff finding out the secret plan”

“fair enough.” Izzy pulled up his conversation with Steven. “so whats the secret plan?”

“alright; so step one is tricking slash into thinking that duff would look way sexier with pink hair” 

“huh?” Why was that step one? Step one should be figuring out what they could do for Duff in exchange for dying his hair pink. Like doing his homework or venmo-ing him cash or something. Or commenting “are the straights okay” under all of @Amandy.Brixx’s posts. He still wondered what had been up with what had been up with that. Not because he was the great crusader against homophobic bullying or anything, but Izzy did enjoy a nice sob story now and then. For sadistic reasons. “why is recruiting slash step one?”

“because duff and slash were totally flirting this morning” 

No. That was not what they had been doing. “I seriously doubt thats what was happening.”

“‘i think you look totally epic already’?” 

Okay, maybe that was what they had been doing. Looking over what had been said, Slash had been less than subtle. In fact, Izzy was mildly surprised he’d missed it. Duff hadn’t really seemed to reciprocate though. On the other hand, Duff was both single and into dick, which boosted Slash’s odds substantially. “alright you win.”

“yayy, thanks izzy” Thanks for what? Thanks for acknowledging that he was right? That was a stupid thing to be thankful for. People shouldn’t ever be thankful for being treated with general human decency and this display of gratitude bothered Izzy.

“you dont have to thank me for agreeing with you.”

“oh, sorry” 

“what for.”

“for bothering you?”

Izzy closed his eyes for a long moment. His frustration with the conversation was rising exponentially. He had a deeply rooted hatred of people apologizing for doing things that hadn’t upset him, or thanking him for things that he didn’t really need to put effort into, or just acting like they were difficult people to hang out with. That’s not to say he wanted everyone to act like Axl and remain ignorant of all their faults, some humility was nice, but to this extent it just came off as fake, and it pissed him off that there were other humans in the world that would treat people so shittily that those people would then be this concerned about their behavior. Never in his life had he met someone that was just naturally this worried about being annoying. This fuckery was a learned trait. 

However, this was not something that needed to be explained to Steven, who probably wouldn’t understand that it wasn’t he himself that had upset Izzy and start apologizing all over again. “don’t worry about bothering me. if you do i will let you know.”

“okay, so how do we recruit slash” Steven’s ability to bounce between being meek and apologetic versus his particular brand of in-your-face enthusiasm was astounding. 

“i have no idea. just convince slash that duff would look hotter with pink hair. or that it would be funny. both are viable options.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See? Yelling at me in the comments does help :D Am I the only one that is ever insanely bothered by people randomly apologizing for stuff that just... isn't even an issue? I've had friends that constantly apologized for being annoying or clingy and the annoying and clingy part of the friendship was that they were always apologizing for their perceived annoying/clinginess. I don't want people to be constantly worrying if they're bothering me. Either bother me and just don't give a fuck about it because it's my problem to deal with, or don't bother me and there's nothing to worry about. Anyhow, thank you all for reading. Going through your comments is always a highlight of my day.


	26. Chapter Twenty-Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Steven persuaded himself that he is a complete waste of time and energy with the help of his loving mother.

“you dont have to thank me for agreeing with you.” Huh? Steven frantically scrolled back up through the chat, trying to figure out where he had screwed up. His impression had always been that you thanked people when they did nice things for you, but maybe Izzy hadn’t wanted to come off as being nice when he had agreed with him. Maybe he was just agreeing so that Steven would stop talking about persuading Duff to dye his hair pink. But that wouldn’t make sense, since Izzy had started the conversation himself. 

But it also wouldn’t make sense for Izzy to be upset with him just for saying thanks. Maybe Izzy just didn’t want to talk about Duff and Slash’s totally plausible future relationship, and so he was trying to change the subject. That still didn’t make total sense, but there were plenty of things that didn’t make sense to Steven that made total sense to other people. Either way, he should apologize now before Izzy got really ticked off with him. 

“oh, sorry”

“what for.” Crap, he’d waited too long to apologize and now Izzy was probably angry with him. Why was he always doing stupid things and making people upset? He tried not to, but Steven should’ve just learned his lesson that he wasn’t cut out to be anybody’s friend. He should just answer Izzy’s question and then resign himself to a life of being unintentionally annoying and unwanted. 

“for bothering you?” Steven hoped he’d guessed right in identifying why Izzy was annoyed with him. Bothering was a pretty general assessment, so it probably wasn’t too far off. It would be so much easier if people would just tell him what was annoying about him so he could stop, but that never happened. They would just slowly pull away from him or suddenly tell him he was irritating and stop talking to him completely. 

Izzy had read his message. Steven tried to put his phone down and pet Shadow instead, but he couldn’t stop worrying about what response he might get back. If he even would get a response. It didn’t help that Shadow saw something outside and abandoned him to bark loudly at the window.

Great, even his own dog didn’t want to be with him. His phone chimed and Steven begged the universe that when he flipped his phone over there wouldn’t be a message from Izzy telling him to never talk to him again. He tried to build himself up for it and be prepared for any message Izzy might have sent, but deep down he knew that yet another person specifically wanting to not be his friend would probably ruin at least his entire week. 

“don’t worry about bothering me. if you do i will let you know.”

The air in the room seemed about twenty times lighter. Steven wanted to ask for more reassurance, maybe a list of things that annoyed Izzy so he knew what to avoid, but decided it would be better to just pretend nothing had happened. Maybe Izzy would forget his tendency to get on people’s nerves. “okay, so how do we recruit slash”

“i have no idea. just convince slash that duff would look hotter with pink hair. or that it would be funny. both are viable options.” 

Those were both good ideas. Steven suggested that they go with the first one, since making a joke out of Duff’s hair would be mean. Izzy seemed to agree, and then the conversation seemed to drift off to random things until Izzy said he had to leave “to go pretend to have a dedicated band with my drummer.” Steven didn’t know what that meant exactly, but he assumed it was something cool because it had the words “band” and “drummer” in it.

He was debating whether or not to message Duff to see how his video chat with Slash had gone and just talk to him more when someone banged on his door and his mom’s voice told him that he had to come downstairs for dinner. The first thing Steven noticed was that Jamie wasn’t there. The second thing he noticed was that dinner was some sort of weird meat-muffins and steamed brussel sprouts. Gross. 

“Where’s Jamie?” Steven asked as he mentally prepared himself for the eating of a dinner that from the appearance and smell alone was probably going to be absolutely disgusting. It wasn’t the eating of the dinner that was going to be difficult exactly, but the pretending that he enjoyed it. He poked at one of the meat-muffins. It looked like ground chicken mixed with tiny bits of onion and some other green vegetable. 

“He’s at a friend’s house. And don’t pick at your food.” Steven stopped poking at the meat-muffin. It didn’t taste too terrible, mostly just like a too-dry meatloaf with absolutely no flavor. In a terrible contrast with the meat-muffins, the brussel sprouts were far too limp and damp. At least the meet-muffins could be improved by drenching them in ketchup.

Dinner continued in complete silence- relatively normal for dinners that weren’t all three of them- until Steven reached for the ketchup for a second time and his mom responded by clearing her throat and putting down her silverware. Steven braced himself. The last time this had happened had been the time in sixth grade when his mom had decided to give him the sex talk in the middle of dinner and then just resumed eating like she had just been mentioning the weather. The time before that he had been when he was four and his mom told him that his father would not be joining them for this meal, or any meal thereafter.

Needless to say, Steven was not a fan of one-on-one conversations with his mom during dinner. So it was a bit of a relief when the conversation started with a nice “So how was your day?”

“It was good.”

“That’s good, did you know your report card came in the mail today?”

“No?” What the hell did report cards have to do with anything? As far as Steven knew, he’d passed all of his classes with decent grades.

“Should we look over it together?” His mom was already pulling out a torn open envelope, so Steven guessed that he didn’t actually get a say in whether they looked over his report card together or not. But aside from some floundering in his algebra and physics classes, he thought he’d maintained a solid B-average. Sure it wasn’t top-student grades, but he hadn’t known it was a topic on the same level of seriousness as divorce and puberty. 

Apparently, his mom thought otherwise though, because she began reading out his grades, stopping every so often to give feedback. “Let’s see, in the first semester, you got a B-minus in your first-period Spanish class. Not great. In your Physics and Algebra classes you had a C. These are both required classes that you will later be tested on in order to graduate. Not a good outlook if your knowledge of the subjects is below average while you are being taught the material. How much do you think you will have forgotten by the time you take the SATs? Physics technically isn’t on that test, but Algebra definitely is and most of your future required science classes will require a basic understanding of numbers.”

“But I tried to understand the numbers!” Steven wanted to scream. And he had tried, but the numbers had never made sense and then Mrs. Bates had added letters and words and signs that he’d never seen before and suddenly they were drawing lines on grids in different colors and seeing where those lines intersected and suddenly he was completely lost and confused. 

Meanwhile, his mom passed briefly over how he’d earned a B-plus in English and Health and a B in financial Literacy before moving on to his second-semester grades. “Still earning a B-minus in Spanish- you’d think the B-minus from first semester might have clued you in that this was a class that you should be studying a bit more on but I guess not- in Physics you somehow managed to raise your grade to a C-plus, so congratulations on being slightly less of a failure. In Algebra your grade dropped to a D-plus. What the hell happened?”

She was looking at him expectantly, like he knew how to describe his inability to comprehend his math class. It had been bad enough feeling like he was wasting the time of the after-school student-tutor his teacher had provided when he’d gotten his second test back with a solid seventy-percent mark. She’d spent at least twenty hours over the course of the school trying to help him pass, although that had been apparently fruitless, based on the way his mom was glaring at him over the creased sheet of paper that displayed his grades. 

“Well, I don’t know what I am going to do with you Steven, but you can rest assured that we will be putting rules in place so that this stays a fluke and is not repeated your Sophmore year. Continuing down the list, you got an A in your English, Physical Education, and Ceramics classes.”

Wait, what? He’d thought A grades were good ones! In fact, the best grades possible, since his high school had some sort of “no extra credit” policy. He knew, since he’d tried to ask Mrs. Bates for some extra credit assignments in a last attempt to raise his grade and had been shot down. “I thought an A was a good grade?”

His mom gave him a look and Steven quickly realized he’d said the wrong thing. “Yes Steven, congratulations on earning full marks on a class where the curriculum consists of playing outside the entire period. Good job. When you’re finished with your dinner you can clear your dishes and go straight to bed. I will think about what we can do about your disregard for your education since you have apparently been taking advantage of the fact that I work full-time and can’t always be around to make sure you’re not neglecting your schooling.”

When Steven passed by the refrigerator to dump the better half of his dinner into the garbage, his appetite gone, he noticed his brother’s middle school report card, filled with mostly B grades with the occasional A, was pinned up with new magnets with “Great Work Jamie” written in sharpie across the top. After clearing his plate and taking Shadow out for her nighttime poop, he retreated into his bedroom, buried his face in his pillow, and tried to pretend he lived in a world where he wasn’t an unnecessary burden on everyone he met.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Congratulations, you all get a nice long and depressing chapter. For those of you who are wondering, Steven's GPA (grade point average) would average out to about 2.88. For comparison, the average GPA of a High School student in America is somewhere between 3.0 and 2.6 and the average GPA of a High School student looking to apply to top colleges is somewhere between 3.5 and 4.0. So Steven probably isn't getting into Harvard or Stanford or even the local State School (Ohio State University has an average acceptance GPA of 3.7) but considering he's a freshman in High School and not a senior, it's not yet unrealistic that he could get his grades up enough to get into a decent college. 
> 
> For those of you who appreciate random Guns N' Roses trivia, Izzy Stradlin- the only band member with a high school diploma- graduated with a D average or a 1.0 GPA.


End file.
